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Foraying into the development of tools aimed at making the current work culture more intuitive and collaborative, tech giant Microsoft released a teaser for its plans for the next Office user interface.
Eyeing a design that “encompasses one’s well-being” — a prospective level up for workspaces in the world gripped by the coronavirus pandemic — Jon Friedman, the company’s corporate vice-president of design and research, explains in a blog what all the user can expect from the upcoming advancements. The video embedded with the blog teases glimpses of the remarkable design of the Office tools, indicating Microsoft’s plans to dabble with more inclusive and seamlessly vibrant workspaces in the present times.
Friedman goes on to explain the motivation behind the plans — still in the exploratory stage for a year or so — by focusing on sustainable achievement through more control on the Office user interface. With this, the company aims to project a holistic ecosystem for its product users across the globe. Here’s a breakdown of what to expect from the next step on the company’s drawing board.
Putting content, and not colors, in focus
The teased design hints at Microsoft’s plans to do away with app-specific colors so that the major focus of the user is on the work being done in the app. This lays out an approach to make the appearance and feel almost the same across Office Suite 365, as opposed to solid tints (Word’s deep blue and Excel’s green). Also from a usability point of view, the teaser points to a remarkable switch from the standard ‘ribbon’ toolbar to a more contextual ribbon interface that works as the user wants it to.
Moreover, the new Office, Friedman writes, will focus on adaptive commanding with exploratory searches that help get seamless integration of files and data across the Suite. This is attributed to deploying artificial intelligence in the software products, which enables contextual exploration capabilities. So when the next time your Excel sheet suggests that you are making a mistake while putting in a formula, just know that a genius design is at work in the background. The new interface thus advances the auto-populating of search questions, dynamic movement of files across channels, and much more. Simply put, each app will work as you want it to, a feature Microsoft users are going to enjoy in online and offline tools as well.
UI ready for seamless connection in pandemic
Another reason to laud the sensibility of the new design is the teaser displaying the Office apps in the new Edge browser, indicating how the company has planned to integrate its online and offline design tools to facilitate workspace functionalities in the pandemic-stricken geological spaces. With work from home becoming the new normal for modern-day employees, the new Office user interface promotes a more comprehensive working space that functions according to their usage and needs.
Also with internet capabilities becoming ubiquitous for even the simplest of households, the move sure amalgamates the company’s vision for its online data management tools and offline Office Suite apps. Bringing these two components together in the design will make the user of the new UI ready for remote and mobile work (cue in the tablet and mobile snippets in the video).
The motto is: More safety, more control
Though not explicitly displayed in the video, the safety features will also go up a notch according to the plan, as per Friedman’s blog. Stressing on ‘designing for protection and peace of mind’, he mentions how the company looks forward to introducing levels of sensitivity for communicators while sharing a confidential file. This gives users control over what a person can do or not do with a document, a policy that larger stakeholders in a company can propagate in the work culture. As for the Family Safety app that Friedman talks about, the users will get to see capabilities like “limiting screen time across different surfaces and devices, awareness of physical contexts and filtering out undesirable content”.
In conclusion, the teased plans for the new Office Suite, though in the works, can give Microsoft’s drive for creativity and collaboration a refreshing facelift. More will come in store, we all just have to wait and watch.
