Microsoft Office Ribbon Inspiring UI Design

Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox just gave me the heads up on the 10 Best Application User Interfaces of 2008.

Nice to see Eyeblaster’s Campaign Monitor leading the charge for the Online Advertising Industry!

The article describes why and what makes a good design interface and what I found interesting was Jakob calls out Microsoft Office’s “Menu Ribbon” as a factor in these great design examples.

“Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.”

Although a caveat is, “Microsoft user interfaces have not always been shining examples of good usability; the company has embraced usability in a big way only in recent years. About 10 years ago, the main design criterion was to pass a Bill Gates review, and Billg’s definitely not an average user.”

I think we’ve all come along way in the last 10 years!

Don’t you?