Applications User interfaces should customizable to meet users’ unique needsnot be rewritten, instead, it should be familiar and built on user’s existing knowledge about how the system works. [REFERENCE NUMBER, httpshttp://www-01.ibmuseit.com/softwarealertbox/ucd/designconcepts/designbasicsfamiliar-design.html]

[REFERENCE NUMBER, http://wwwijcem.google.caorg/papers12011/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=steering%20law%20sub%20menu&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.11812011_21.7601%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&ei=0iq7To-uFaXZ0QHx5eDeCQ&usg=AFQjCNHrOOm9nR54M4rbGAuFJ8fq1CteiA&cad=rjapdf]Principle of Navigation

Signals are likely perceived and interpreted in accordance with what is expected based on a user’s past experience. User interfaces should be predictable and be designed in a way that will meet common users’ expectation.

[REFERENCE NUMBER, http://wwwijcem.google.caorg/papers12011/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=steering%20law%20sub%20menu&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.11812011_21.7601%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&ei=0iq7To-uFaXZ0QHx5eDeCQ&usg=AFQjCNHrOOm9nR54M4rbGAuFJ8fq1CteiA&cad=rjapdf]

Since its first version for Windows, Word for Windows 1.0, Word had been using the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointing device) design. After Over fourteen years of time its lifetime (1989 to 2003), Word had grown evolved into a very complex word processor with a long list of features. To handle such a rich feature base, Word’s WIMP user interface had developed sophisticated techniques such as adaptable menus, submenus and sub-submenus to reduce the amount of information presented to its user.

Submenus and sub-submenus are ways to shorten a menu by categorizing related menu items together to form a submenu and place the category name as a menu item at the parent menu with an extra ‘▶’ at the end of the category name. By clicking the menu item or hovering onto the menu item for one second, the submenu/sub-submenu will appear. As However, if the user’s mouse was not hovering correctly on the menu item or mis-clicked on another menu item, the desired submenu will disappear. Due to the fact that submenus and sub-submenus are designed to hide information, they naturally violate the Principle of Minimizing Access Cost and Principle of Feature Exposure in the same way as adaptable menus. Other than feature exposure and access costIn addition, submenus and sub-submenus also violates Principle of Consistency and yield low selection time menu navigation performance(see Steering Law). Due to the fact that As a menu can have zero to many submenus/sub-submenus, it is impossible for one to find any two menus that shares predict the same structureof a menu. Therefore, users must spend time and effort to remember the each menu’s organization of each of the menus. Finally, regarding selection menu navigation time, one should consider the mouse hovering accuracy requirement of the submenus and sub-submenus discussed above. [REFERENCE NUMBER, http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=steering%20law%20sub%20menu&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.118.7601%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&ei=0iq7To-uFaXZ0QHx5eDeCQ&usg=AFQjCNHrOOm9nR54M4rbGAuFJ8fq1CteiA&cad=rja] indicates that general mouse users would require two seconds to access any menu item on a sub menu and three seconds to access any menu item on a sub-submenu. And as a reference point, [REFERENCE NUMBER] also mentioned that it takes an average of one second for selecting any first level menu item.Figure X: A menu, a submenu and a sub-submenu 

Secondly, the team looked at studied Word 2007, which marks the initial release of the Ribbon UI. In this version, Microsoft Word received a major user interface redesign with the introduction of the Ribbon UI, the Office button, the Office menu and mega-menus.

The major departure from Word 2003 to Word 2007 was the removal of Word’s the classic WIMP user interface is and the introduction of the Ribbon UI. The Ribbon UI is a tabbed menu aimed at easing user navigation by eliminating most of the expendable menus, submenus and sub-submenus found in the classic Word user interface. The goal was successfully achieved by moving all the toolbar menus into ribbon tabs, moving all menu items found in the classic menu bar to Ribbon as buttons with icons in a tab and converting all the sub-submenus to pop-up menus activated by clicking the Ribbon buttons.However, by introducing the Ribbon UI, Microsoft had failed to obey the Principle of Familiarity. According to [REFERENCE NUMBER, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/familiar-design.html], users are interested in completing their task with skilled performance (as fast as the user can finish the task, based on his/her familiarity of the user interface) without spending extra time to analyze a new user interface. In this regard, the team did a small research into the user acceptance and the average Office productivity of the Ribbon UI. According to [REFERENCE NUMBER, http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf], users with longer word processing experience share the feeling that the Ribbon UI is not well organized and are less satisfied with it. And [REFERENCE NUMBER, http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm], pointed out that on average, users experience a twenty percent productivity drop after using the Ribbon UI. This outcome can be explained by using the Principle of Familiarity - the Ribbon UI destroyed experienced user’s skilled performance by introducing uncertainty and extra time spent on analyzing and learning the structure and button placement of the new user interface. Figure X: The Word 2007 Ribbon 

By studying the design of the Office button, the team believes that Microsoft had failed to obey four three of the user interface design principles: Principle of Familiarity, Principle of Top-down Processing, and Principle of Navigation Minimizing Accessing Cost.As the Office button contains submenus for save as, print and other operations, it inherits the problem of submenus’ problem with slowing down the user’s menu navigation and hence, violates the Principle of Minimizing Accessing Cost. As In addition, the Office logo provides no hint that it is meant for file operations, users cannot apply any expectation nor user interface knowledge to determine the meaning of the Office button. Therefore, one can conclude that the Office button is simply an unfamiliar and meaningless button with very low usability.NOTEFigure X: The Office button’s violation of Principle of Navigation Button and Principle of Minimizing Accessing Cost will be discussed in the Word 2010 subsection.its Save As submenu  

In compliance of the Principle of Top-down Processing, the insert shape menu is designed as a big and , two-dimensional pop-up menu with its shape divided into labeled categories. This format allows users to search for their desired shapes easier by scanning only the desired category to narrow down their search.

To follow the Principle of Consistency, all menu categories and items are structured and follow the same layoutwhere shapes are placed from left to right.

In Word 2007, the Office button was the equivalent of Word 2003’s File menu. By clicking the Office button, a pop-up menu (the Office Menu) with common file menu operations such as Save as and Print will appear. As mentioned previously, the Office button provides no evidence that it is meant for file operations. In addition, the Office Menu also inherited Word 2003’s submenus including Permission and Send To2003 submenus’ weaknesses, which are considered violation of the principle Principle of Minimized Accessing Cost and posts extra delay to users’ navigation and principle of minimized accessing cost.To address the issue, Microsoft replaced the Office button/menu with the File Tab. Obeying the Principle of Familiarity, the File Tab button is located at the leftmost corner of the Ribbon to resemble the location of the classic File menu. Clicking on the File Tab button will cause the entire editing area of Word 2010 to be replaced by a file screen with left and right section. The left section of the file screen is used to store most of the menu items of the Office buttonand the right section will display the submenu/sub-submenu items if there is any. Instead To solve the problem of animating Office button, Microsoft removed the “fade in” animation of the submenu, clicking a submenu will cause menu and programmed the right section of the file screen page in a way that a file page menu item requires the user to click on a menu item to show the submenu items of that submenu. Without the size limit of a submenu, the height of the submenu item had been increased was able to increase from 6 millimeters to about 1.5 centimeters while the distance between the main menu item and the submenu item remains unchanged. According to the Steering Law, this height increase is equivalent to an increase in the W variable of the law (width of the travelling path). This renders a large reduction of the b(A/W)term and hence easing the navigation by reducing the average time of selecting the submenu item (the cost of accessing the submenu item). In additionFinally, the elimination of the “fade in” animation is also an effort to better comply the Principle of Minimizing Access Cost – instead of paying attention with the animation, the user can better focus on his/her task and hence reducing the time and mental effort spent on handling the context switching. Figure X: The File tab and File page