May - Jul, 2018
PowerPoint Online is shifting from the traditional Office ribbon to a sleeker single-line ribbon. This project aims to explore interactions within the narrower ribbon space to optimize the animation experience and beyond.
UX Designer Intern
Web Application
Inspired the team's product plannning
As PowerPoint Online evolves with a shift towards a single-line ribbon interface, the challenge is to fit animation features into a smaller space, modernize the animation experience, and incorporate more desktop app (animation) features.
After analyzing hundreds of real-world animated slides created by PowerPoint users of various skill levels and for diverse purposes, we identified three main user objectives reflecting different skills, goals, and expectations.
Using animation in PowerPoint should be an enjoyable experience, allowing users to easily experiment with a variety of pre-made animation options.
Animations should facilitate content presentation and narrative construction, effectively capturing the audience's attention with key information.
Animations should offer high customization options, enabling the creation of sophisticated yet practical visual cues to captivate the audience.
The Progressive Approach strategically places features within the ribbon, contextual menu, and side pane, adapting to the escalating complexity of users' animation requirements. This method tries to ensures a seamless transition for users as they advance from basic to more sophisticated animation tasks.
The contextual animation menu enables users to swiftly customize pre-set animations for immediate adjustments.
The side pane offers advanced animation options for crafting more complex animations, including the construction of animation structures, group editing, and beyond.
Looking back at 2024, I'm thrilled to see that PowerPoint Online has embraced the idea of preset animation adjustments right on the single-line ribbon, and even introduced the Animation Pane. While the outcome varies from our concept, I'm convinced that the strategy of visualizing animation sequences and groups is a positive step for future iterations.
Back in 2018, we toyed with the idea of using Machine Learning (ML) for animation suggestions based on slide content. Now, in 2024, with the rise of Generative AI, the future of smarter animation recommendations seems brighter than ever. It's inspiring to see our early ideas paving the way for this innovative future.