Ribbon Hero has been available for a few weeks, and in that time we’ve seen over 32,000 downloads, 25,000 challenges played, over 650 Facebook fans, and lots of general excitement about using games to motivate learning.

We’ve had a few customers with early access to the Office 2010 RC build ask us to release a version of Ribbon Hero that works with Office RC, so we’ve released a new build of Ribbon Hero (build 1.0.0.4) that does exactly that. This new release will work with all Office builds moving forward.

Since the January 19 launch, we’ve been busy listening to feedback from our early adopters and planning our next release. The top issues we’ve heard so far are:

·        Ribbon Hero doesn’t recognize all of the ways of completing a task. It’s true that there is often more than one way to complete a task – for example, a function might be accessible through a Ribbon button, keyboard shortcut, dialog box, or right-click menu. In general, we try to reward all of the fastest, or most efficient, ways of completing a task.  This means you will often get points for completing a task in a few different ways. But if you’re using less efficient steps to complete a task, Ribbon Hero teaches you a faster way to do it!

o   Note that in some cases we do want you to do the task in a specific way, and in those cases, the instructions will say something like “Find the button that…” or “Use the keyboard shortcut to…”  If we haven’t specified this, then you should assume any efficient way of completing a task should be recognized.

o   If you’re not getting credit for completing a task but you think you’re doing it the best way possible, we want to know about it so we can look into it! Here’s what you should tell us (in the Ribbon Hero discussion forums):

·        What challenge are you playing (and in what app)?

·        What steps did you take (what commands you used, buttons you clicked, keyboard shortcuts you used, etc)?

·        The installer requires me to be an administrator. For the time being, there is no way around this limitation, but it’s is something we’re working on fixing in a subsequent release. Stay tuned.

·        The installer says Ribbon Hero is published by Microsoft, but when I boot Word/Excel/PowerPoint for the first time, it says Publisher Unknown. This is a known issue that we’re working on solving. You can trust that if you downloaded Ribbon Hero from http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero or http://apps.facebook.com/ribbonhero, you are installing the right component.

·        I don’t understand how to earn all of the points. The first time you complete a challenge, you’ll earn some points. But then we want you to use those same features in the app (on another day) to prove you’ve mastered those features! You can earn all the points for any challenge by using it twice, on two separate days – and only one of those times can you get points from playing the challenge. The second time you have to use those features in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.

For tips and tricks like this, check out Doug Thomas’s video about Ribbon Hero (below). If you like this video, you can check out Doug’s other fun video tips& tricks here.

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·        Support for more apps? This is something we have our eye on, but there are a lot of ideas we want to try out in a smaller environment (currently three applications) before we expand to more Office applications.

What can I look forward to?

We’re working on making Ribbon Hero more fun, more enjoyable, and more interesting. Here are a few ideas we’re thinking about, sketching, and discussing in our hallways. Some of these ideas may make it into our first major update.

·        More fun, more enjoyable, more interesting. We’re thinking about ideas like bragging when you pass a friend on the leaderboard (on the flip side, getting notified when someone passes you), earning or unlocking things when you reach various point milestones, giving you extra credit for earning Max Efficiency, and more.

·        More challenges. A few of you have played all of the challenges in our v1, so we’re thinking about releasing new challenges to give you more to learn and play.

·        More apps: this is an idea that’s sitting on the back burner for now, but it’s something we’re excited about, especially based on how many people have asked for Ribbon Hero for OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Visio, and more.

We want to hear from you – what do you think of these ideas, and what do you want to see Ribbon Hero do down the road?

Have feedback or general comments?

Post it on our discussion forums.

Want to stay in the loop?

Become a fan of Ribbon Hero on Facebook.