I’ve been working internally on courseware for Microsoft for a while now. As part of that, I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the Office12 team.
Now, you can see much of what I’ve seen, at this funky Channel9 video.
Don’t make judgements on the new UI until you’ve watched about 20 minutes of the video. That’s about how long it took me to go from “this sucks” to “holy hell this is awesome!”. It’s a whole new way at looking at user interaction, and it’s a Good Thing, in my opinion.
Also, Bill Gates’ keynote just finished, and I had about a half dozen “holy wow!” moments 
I already knew Office 12 would rock. Now I know Vista will as well. I can’t wait to get my hands on Vista!
Technorati Tags : microsoftoffice, microsoft, preview, channel9, office12
#1 by anon - September 14th, 2005 at 03:06
By any chance, are you looking to be hired by Microsoft?
#2 by Jeremy Wright - September 14th, 2005 at 08:35
anon: Nope. I’ve been offered a few jobs and turned them down. I’m enjoying doing my own thing too much right now
#3 by Alex Moskalyuk - September 14th, 2005 at 14:56
I don’t know, kinda hard to get excited about a word processor and a spreadsheet. Didn’t see if the copy-paste functionality would finally work right in Excel 12.
#4 by Mr. Shiney - September 21st, 2005 at 11:32
On the one hand, its exciting to see MS taking a serious look at user interface design. On the other hand, from the perspective of a long-time office user (who’s used to things as they are) any kind of changes are likely not to be useful. People stick with Office because a) that’s what everyone else uses, and b) that’s what they are used to. MS would be smart to be mindful of that, and definitely should allow the user to go back to the old UI (as well as give them a high degree of customization)!
Some humor about the new UI
http://mrshiney.froppy.com/blog/