Note sent to Microsoft while working with Office 2007 Word beta …

In the “I can’t find what I’m looking for…” Department in Word
Looking for “Insert File” which I believe in Word 2003 is indeed under the Insert menu.

Ya know, the pretty pictures (icons) in 2007 are nice…but in fact they are just pictures/icons, and are basically meaningless. There is no inherent “mapping” between these icons and the function to which they are supposed to represent, and from a cognitive standpoint, this just makes finding things more frustrating as there is a extra step that you have to go through, like:

1. Think of what you want to do
2. Think of which menu it might be under
3. Click on the menu
4. Look at all the icons
5. Read the text descriptions of what the icons mean

Steps 4 and 5 were combined under a single step in 2003.

Also, stuff under the “Circle” now isn’t really intuitive either….why not use the old “File” menu there? Now I have to Look at the Circle and I think “file” I believe I read that you’ve maybe bagged the circle in an updated design.

Since I’ve been using Word for yonks now, (since it was a DOS program), I admit that the changes may be more difficult for me as a legacy user rather than for someone who is coming from it fresh.

In the meantime…I’m clicking all over the place trying to find where the Insert File function is. 🙂