Office 2010: New Product, New Blog

Since we signed off on Office 2007 in October 2006, we've been hard at work on the next version, Office 2010. As successful has Office 2007 has been, it represented but a first step in our journey towards rethinking the user experience of Office. Office 2010 will be, in many ways, the culmination of the work we started back in August 2003.

Recently, as the Office 2010 Technical Preview was finalized, I moved to a different team within Microsoft, working in a similar role for Windows. As a result, I won't be personally blogging about the Office 2010 user interface.

Luckily, the Office team has created the Office 2010 Engineering Blog as a hub for members of the Office engineering team to write about Office 2010. Clay Satterfield, one of the architects of the Ribbon and the Backstage View added in Office 2010, kicked off the discussion of the user experience today by publishing the first part in a series of posts about this new UI. Future posts from the User Experience team will delve into Ribbon customization, Live Preview paste, and many other enhancements in Office 2010.

I encourage you to check out the new blog, and to give feedback on the Office 2010 Technical Preview if you have access to it. Early feedback is an important part of the process of how we improve the user experience of our products, so feel free to dig and and let them know what you think!