I was thinking the other day about why I don’t like the ribbon. And the conclusion that I ultimately came to was that it broke consistency with the bulk of the apps of the platform, in fact it’s so different I wouldn’t claim that it is even close consistent with any user interface before it (on any platform I’ve seen). Consistency is something I feel is vastly under-appreciated in software design, having a consistent look and feel across applications means that users will be more comfortable with the application.

As an example of how consistency helps users, think about the mobile phone. Let’s consider these two phones:

Ericsson T610

Apple iPhone

As an iPhone user I have no issue using either of these phones, but, if I hand my grandmother both of these phones she is comfortable using the Ericsson, while with the iPhone there is no such comfort level. Despite the fact that she never grew up with cell phones (or even cordless phones) the Ericsson is consistent the phones she knows.

Sorry for that rather long example, back to my original point. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that before you go crafting a “sexy” new user interface convention that you think is cool, think about the platform, think about the other applications and what they’re doing, if there is one think about the HIG (Apple has one for the Mac and I believe there is one for the iPhone, but I’m having difficulty tracking it down.

Above: example of several interface styles in used in Windows XP.