The New Office Experience: Embracing the New Workflow (Premium)

It is perhaps not coincidental that the coming Windows 10X user experience mimics that provided by Office on multiple platforms and entry-points. Microsoft is clearly trying to move its users to a more consistent user experience for accessing the applications and documents that they need to get work done each day. And as I noted in my earlier peeks at workflow in both Chromebook and Windows 10X, some of us will need to make adjustments.

Granted, Microsoft has been working on abstracting the file system and moving towards a simpler user experience for years. For example, Windows 95 featured a short-lived document-centric user interface paradigm whereby users could create new documents---a new compound documents, another short-lived experiment---without first finding and launching an application. Windows Vista introduced virtual folders, so we could think of broad terms like documents, music, and pictures instead of manually navigating to specific folder locations. And Windows Phone furthered both concepts by trying to hide the file system and applications and providing sweeping “people-centric” (really, user-centric) hubs of functionality.

Those are just a few examples, but you get the idea: While power users like us spend time tweaking File Explorer, Microsoft Word, or whatever other tools to work just the way we want, mainstream users just want to get in and out. They want to get work done as simply and efficiently as possible and then move on. And they want to do so on whatever device or using whichever interface they prefer. Windows or Mac, perhaps. Mobile platforms like Android and iOS. The web. Whatever.

As noted, Microsoft has tried to evolve its user experiences. But its user base has been surprisingly resistant to change. Over time, its users did move from the MS-DOS days, when many saved every single file in the root of the C:/ drive and using a command-line experience to Windows, where many still save files to their desktop or other folders via a more graphical interface. But more modern platforms have already moved well past this well-worn and perhaps obsolete UI. And Microsoft is trying to adapt. Again.

Windows 10X and what Microsoft calls the new Office experience both embody, I think, Microsoft’s latest thinking in this area. If you’re confused by the new Office experience, it can be found in multiple end-points, from the Office app for Windows 10 to the new Office mobile app for Android and iOS to Office.com and the Office 365 Launcher (for both consumers and commercial customers) to the Office extension for Chrome and other browsers (including the new Edge) and probably elsewhere. The idea, in all cases, is to put everything you need to get work done in one place.

I’ve written in the past about how I---an admittedly old-school user---still use my PC desktop as a scratch space. Each day, I temporarily the store documents and images I need for articles I’m working on there, and as I complete those artic...