Microsoft Word! We all know it, and chances are we all use it, too. But no software stays the same over time—that’s the nature of this iterative career path we’ve chosen. So let’s take a quick dive into Word’s history:
Who designed Word, and when?
Then called the Multi-Tool Word, Microsoft Word was brought into the world by Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie (two former Xerox software developers) in 1983. The pair were hired by Microsoft’s founders, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, to create a word-processor program that could create, save, edit, print out documents.
How have Word’s Interactions changed over time?
Navigation Bar
One thing that changed drastically between older versions of Word and more recent ones is the navigation bar. For someone interested in Content Design, it was especially interesting to see what words were replaced/added throughout the years in accordance to rearranged features. For instance, “Font” and “Format” were likely nested in the 1985 version of Word, but in the 1987 version they’ve staked a claim on the navigation bar. “Search” disappears in 1990 and doesn’t reappear until MUCH later versions. In the 2000 version, the entire interface has undergone major changes, and the navigation bar is a much smaller size.
Why were these changes made? It seems that in the older versions the microcopy was mixed with regards to representing a single tool with different options vs. a set of tools with options within each individual tool (e.g., “format” vs. “document”). Later versions may have changed these terms to make the interface more consistent both in IA and users’ understanding of what the terms mean.
Tool (buttons) Layout
Another obvious change are the tool buttons directly below the navigation bar. In early versions of Word, these buttons were completely nonexistent. Over time, it seems that the developers pulled certain features from the drop-downs and made them permanently visible features on the interface. This makes sense with what we know about user behavior now: the whole topic of making features more “discoverable.” The features that are used more often should be the most obvious and most accessible. It’s also interesting noticing how many variations of the button positioning they attempted: some stacked, some all in one line, and even one (1992) with the document title awkwardly slapped in the middle of these controls.
How has word’s delivery changed over time?
Word began as a WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) program only available on computers running the UNIX operating system. It needed to be installed and only later became accessible through the web or mobile.
SOURCES
https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/microsoft-word
https://www.core.co.uk/blog/blog/history-microsoft-word
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Microsoft-Word
