Ribbon Hero, coming to help you rock with the Ribbon

Ribbon Hero

In my casual scavenging of trademark applications at the USPTO, a new trademark filed this week has revealed an interesting new project from Microsoft that aims to help people familiarize themselves with the Ribbon user interface with a game inspired by the “Hero” franchise. No, I’m not kidding.

Trademark serial number 77872539 for “Ribbon Hero” is classified as a “computer software for training users to use business application software; and computer game software for use in computer user training”. In detail, it will…

providing online training in the nature of tutorials and “how to” demonstrations in the field of business application software; educational services, providing training and educational materials in the field of business application software; entertainment in the nature of competitions in the field of business application software user skills; and providing recognition and incentives by the way of awards and contests to demonstrate excellence in the field of business application software user skills.

After some more digging around, it turns out this is actually a project by the Office Labs folks whose privacy policy page reveals this will actually be a Facebook game with competitive scoring.

If you use the Ribbon Hero Facebook application, Microsoft stores your Facebook ID and the ID of your primary Facebook network. When you connect to Facebook, you can choose to share your scores with your friends. This will make your Facebook profile picture and overall score appear in your Facebook friends’ Ribbon Wars leaderboard. In addition, your overall score will be counted towards your primary Facebook network’s average score. Your Facebook friends will be able to click on your profile picture in Ribbon Hero, and then see how many points you have on each challenge.

Will this be a bigger hit than Guitar Hero 3 and Farmville? Only time will tell.

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