Microsoft gives behind-the-scenes look at design process for Office for iPad

After several years of rumors, Microsoft finally released Office for iPad in March, and since then the Office suite of apps have been downloaded over 27 million times from the App Store. The Office for iPad team gave a behind-the-scenes look at how the apps were designed from scratch for the iPad rather than simply porting it from Windows.

Since the tablet is a nascent computing platform, before designing Office, Microsoft laid out the most common scenarios where the apps would most likely be used. These were:

• Packing up for the ride home
• Starting from scratch
• Last minute scramble
• Buttoning things up
• Collaborating with coworkers
• Taking notes

In the blog post describing the design process, Microsoft also outlined the user experience goals the company wanted to achieve with the Office apps:

• Familiar Office experience, with no learning curve
• Unmistakably Office, optimized for iPad
• Immersive and removes distractions
• Document content, not UI, takes center stage
• Experience is always beautiful, fast, and fluid

One of the reasons Office for iPad was delayed was that Microsoft’s own Windows platform didn’t have a touch-first version of Office. Microsoft talks about designing a touch-first interface for the iPad in the blog post:

The purpose of a familiar Office experience is simple: a low learning curve and high user confidence. However, it’s just as important to strike a balance between “unmistakably Office” and “platform optimization,” which means optimizing for iOS platform conventions and touch-first user expectations. The most important, yet challenging, goal was finding the sweet spot between the essence of Office and iOS. Fortunately, since the Office for iPad and Mac team (formally known as the Macintosh Business Unit) is made up of Apple platform specialists, we were able to apply our deep knowledge of Apple platforms to the task.

Microsoft is known for not shying away from exposing complex interfaces to users with a variety of options and customisations, as evident from its Ribbon interface on Windows apps. But the company simplified the interface to fit in the standard iOS navigation bar with a single row of options, and also modernised the look after iOS 7 came out:

You can read the entire blog post here, and can download the Office for iPad apps for free from the links below:

• Excel
• Powerpoint
• Word

Posted in: Apple iPhone, iPhone 5, News iPhone/ iPod, Phones, Rumor