Current mood:

chipper

It really was already there!

I think it's a good thing thing that Office 12 is changing the UI.  (See a quick demo during PDC05 keynote.)  This is also documented pretty well here.  It will be better.

However, lots of the features people requested were already there!

In the CNET post about 'feature creep' it is stated, "In user testing, Microsoft found that nine out of every 10 features that customers wanted to see added to Office were already in the program."  (Italics added for emphasis.)  This was also stated by Chris Capposella, just prior to the PDC05 demo noted above.

Sound shocking?

Well, that's the way it works a lot of times in the world of designing anything.  Many times it takes delivering what is really needed, not just what people say they need.  This is well said in the Creating Passionate Users post called, Listening to users considered harmful?  Unfortunately, with a lot of software design, sometimes the designs are just ahead of their time.  It takes user education and time to get them to catch up.  Users are catching up, and starting to think that some features are cool now.  From my experience as a Technology Strategist and IT Consultant, this is nothing new, and more often than not, the features were already there!