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Comment by hulitu | Hacker News Reader

> Asking a user to interact with one of these chat interfaces is like asking them what they want - every time they use the software.

The ribbon is the same. Good luck finding something in it.

But this seems to be the future.

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The ribbon (particularly in Microsoft Office) solves the problem that users don't know what they want, because it lays out all the options in front of them in a clearly organized hierarchy, with hover previews and textual labels for every command except for extremely well-known commands (like Bold/Italic). This is very different from chat interfaces, which are opaque black boxes and in order to get anything out of them users have to express their wish in words, with nothing to start from.

I'll just add here that it doesn't have to be only one or the other. The ribbon might be good for discovering features, but it's inefficient for using those features once discovered. If the user already knows what the thing they want is called, the fastest way to find it is a search bar that searches the labyrinth of menus and ribbons when you type into it. Google and Mac apps usually have this.

Press Alt. It will highlight the key-binding to press to reach any item on the ribbon.

I think Apple’s approach to menus is preferable - one can search and it will highlight places in the menu where the term appears. Usually I know what I want to do, I just don’t know where it’s located in the menu.

For MS products I end up Googling how to do something and invariably get instructions for a slightly different version with a menu layout that is also slightly different and work it out from there.

MS Office has the same search behaviour, and the ribbon layout has not changed since it was first implemented in Office 2007.

MS Office search doesn't show me where in the menu the item I searched for is located - if I rely on the search, I haven't learned where the thing is in the menu.

> For MS products I end up Googling how to do something and invariably get instructions for a slightly different version with a menu layout that is also slightly different and work it out from there.

Sounds like something ChatGPT could help with

> it lays out all the options in front of them in a clearly organized hierarchy

I don't know for who is this hierarchy clearly organized, but for me it is not. Yesterday i spent 10 minutes searching on how to recall a mail in outlook. Searching for "headers and footers" is the same.

While I don't mind the ribbon, I also don't think it's a UX triumph. It will always be possible to find examples of bad UX.

That does not mean there isn't a better visual representation out there, or that replacing it with a conversational interface is a natural alternative.

I think it is shockingly ugly.

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