A comment we've heard again and again about the Office 12
interface after people use it or see it demoed live is: "wow,
it's so much better than I imagined just by seeing the
screenshots."  Several people made that comment to me once again
after my talk at PARC Tuesday night, and I wanted to write down
some thoughts on the subject.  Fundamentally, there's a kind of
UI that is built with great screenshots in mind.  Generally
including big, shiny buttons with copious whitespace on all
sides, these interfaces look extremely simple and easy-to-use in
"back-of-the-box" marketing screenshots.  The screenshot-
optimized interface is generally low-density, with only a few
controls on the screen at once.  We've definitely thought about
this in designing boxshots for marketing materials in past
releases of Office.  The picture we show on the back of the box
is what the product looks like the first time you run it.  But
one of the problems with the current Office user interface is
that it tends to degrade over time--tool