The Lonely Planet Surface application that Amnesia Razorfish showed at Remix has been generating heaps of interest, so I’m pleased to say that the videos are finally online for your viewing pleasure.
First check out the Lonely Planet keynote demo (around 7.5 minutes):
Then for more detail on designing for touch and multitouch, and for the back story of the Lonely Planet design process, check out the session Iain McDonald from Amnesia Razorfish did with me later in the day (about 45 minutes):
Design in the Round: Creating Compelling User Experiences for Surface
Also, here are the slides for the session:
Come to UXAustralia for more
The process for designing for Surface, and especially for multiple simultaneous users is a fascinating one. I’m gonna talk more about that at my UXAustralia session in August in Canberra: Designing for multitouch, and multiple touchpoints.
(Thanks to Ben Harrison and Michael Kordahi for all their work encoding the videos.)
(Also, thanks to Gabriel White, from whom I pinched some ideas for this presentation.)
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The idea of creating rich interactivity without code should sound very appearing to designers, because we want to turn static UI into interactive prototypes and test out our design ideas quickly. In Blend 3, “Behaviors” are packaged, re-usable building blocks of interactivity. They can be visually applied to UI components in the application using drag and drop. No more opening up Visual Studio and writing routine code like starting an animation when a button is clicked. Blend 3 will have bunch of commonly used Behaviors shipping with the tool, but they are extensible so that you or your developers can create your customized Behaviors.
After watching Peter Blois’ MIX talk “Creating Interactivity with Microsoft Expression Blend,” I experienced the power of Behaviors myself in the tutorial below. For example, I used 3 different triggers( Mouse Click, Timer, and Mouse Gesture) to play the slideshow behavior. You can download many interesting Behaviors that the community are making at Expression Gallery page.
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While Surface units are still not available in Australia, Aussie companies who are champing at the bit to give Surface design and development a try can now at least get access to the SDK and simulator, and get started working on Surface applications.
Microsoft partners can now sign up to the Surface Partner Program. The entry level (“Microsoft Surface Community Members”) provides access to the SDK and simulator, as well as training and other resources. No commitment.
Clarification: this is the Workstation edition of the SDK, not the full SDK which comes with a Surface developer unit. What does that mean? The Microsoft Surface SDK Workstation Edition is meant for developing applications on a PC using a simulator. Having the Workstation Edition of the SDK gives Microsoft Partners a chance to do some investigation on using the WPF controls and do some initial Proof of Concept work. The simulator lets you simulate tags or multiple mice, but of course to really nail the correct user experience for Surface, you need to refine the design with an actual unit.
If you’re not already a Microsoft Partner, check out the Microsoft Partner program. It’s free to sign up.
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As your project evolves from simple sketches to prototypes, you may want to add some real interactivity to it. There are two useful tools in Blend make this really easy: Sample Data and Behaviors. This tutorial will focus on Sample Data and how designers can bind data visually in Blend. The next tutorial will be on Behaviors.
In previous version of Blend, we introduced data binding features in Blend. However, in order to make sample data targeted to particular applications, designers had to create XML data files in Visual Studio or other editors and then import into Blend. There was no easy way in Blend to generate the sample data they need. Check out how Sample Data makes this process easy in the tutorial below!
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Bill Buxton talks about the difference between “Sketch” and “Prototype” in this his Sketching User Experiences. (see the summary below)
I agree sketching is an important part of the design process, but often times it’s hard to share our paper and pen sketches and get feedback from others. Following Part I of the SketchFlow tutorial, this tutorial demos the SketchFlow player and different ways designers can share their design ideas.
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Two years and an half ago, when I first joined Microsoft, we were getting ready to release Expression Studio 1. Expression Blend is a key product in the studio and works closely with Visual Studio. It was a great first step to support designers with visual tools to help them build rich interactive web and client. However, both Blend1 and Blend 2 were focused on supporting the final design within the production phrase. Much of the work designers do with in the ideation and early prototyping stages were not well supported.
The figure below illustrate a typical iterative design process, and the highlighted rectangle shows the final design phrase that Blend 1 & 2 supported. Many designers I talked to have this question: Would Blend support conceptual design and interaction design in the future and would it integrate with your Office suites? The answer is YES!
Blend 3 Beta was announced at MIX this year, and the SketchFlow demo generated lots of excitement among the designer community. After MIX, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on SketchFlow, and I know a lot of you are patiently waiting the release of Blend 3 which includes SketchFlow. So, l thought to record my learning experience with Blend as mini-tutorials to show you a number of things I found very useful as a designer. Hopefully, they’ll give you a quick start.
This is the first part of the SketchFlow tutorial includes topics on:
- managing Blend workspace for SketchFlow
- creating new screens in Flow Pane and link between them
- using sketch styles and integrating your sketches
- creating component screens that can be added to each screen
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A short mediation on current affairs. The events in Iran and with the recent passing of Michael Jackson have shown us that no matter how much the word changes it still stays the same.
With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us.
One of Orson Wells early, among numerous, moments of genius was his serialized rendition of War of the Worlds, presented documentary style on October 30, 1938 on the CBS radio network. Because many did not hear the beginning of the broadcast it had the unintended (maybe?) impact of inciting a panic among millions.To whit.
Richard J. Hand cites studies by unnamed historians who "calculate[d] that some six million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were 'genuinely frightened'".[1] While Welles and company were heard by a comparatively small audience (in the same period, NBC's audience was an estimated 30 million), the uproar was anything but minute: within a month, there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as Hand writes, as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy."[1]
A disturbing but inevitable trend with social media phenomena like Twitter is that the information we get from those mediums is no more reliable than we can get anywhere else (Such as Mr. Goldblum’s apparent demise) and is perhaps, currently, more susceptible to manipulation than we believe.
Imagine the utility and value of Twitter in a national disaster along the lines of Katrina or 9/11. Now image ‘envious’ parties that wanted to use tools like Twitter to sow confusion and paranoia through that channel.
When we look at Iran we see that tools like Twitter and internet can sow the seeds of the revolution while at the same enable the lockdown, manipulation and preservation of the status quo. See The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized: How the Internet Helps Iran Silence Activists for a more nuanced exploration by Farhad Manjoo and see Deep Packet Inspection to understand some of the implications of what we do online contain.
This is not to say that tools like Twitter or Facebook should not be trusted, they are merely technology that can be used for a ‘variety’ of ends and we should perhaps be thinking about the far broader implications that they bring to our world—at a pace that we don’t seem to be prepared to deal with.
We forget that things like fire and electricity are technologies and tools that we use that required literally centuries to integrate into our societies. We had the benefit of a more casual momentum of adoption with them that we don’t possess with many of the social media technologies that we’re already starting to take for granted. Do we need a ‘fire-department’ for Twitter? Do governments and citizens need plans and policies around social media? Are some of these issues even things we should think about from a National Security perspective? I’m going to place my bets now and say yes.
As the social media infrastructure becomes the medium for communication in our world we need to ensure that checks and balances are in place that allow it to be an open, creditable and verifiable mechanism for communication.
I would say in the realms of technology journalism that this is already a losing battle as a majority of content is simply an eco-chamber of unsubstantiated leaks, emails and punditry that has replaced the critical thinking and commentary that used to dominate the field.
Perhaps in the realms of technology or celebrity journalism these are not deal breakers, but when it comes to world events and the real time reporting of disasters or global crises it certainly is.
[1] Hand, Richard J. (2006). Terror on the Air!: Horror Radio in America, 1931-1952. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarland & Company. p. 7. ISBN 0-786-42367-6.
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My last post looked to the past to explain how productivity was a key to Microsoft’s initial success but that new business models and the ascent of the internet has changed that equation.
One simple way to illustrate this is to look at software development. Historically software development has had it’s roots in what is good for the IT organization. Is it cheaper, easier, manageable for technologists to do what they need to accomplish? This was pretty evident in the systems design and command and control structure of technology as it evolved in the 50s through the 80s.
The advent of the PC opened up a new opportunity. It made technology more accessible to folks outside the traditional groups that controlled technology. In effect, non-technology oriented folks in consumer and enterprise markets had a new say in how things could be done and if they didn’t like what the IT organization was saying or doing they could often take things into their own hands. This basically let to the birth of modern operating systems and productivity software as we know it.
But this phase held on to some of the patterns from the command and control days, de-facto standards were held by a few an interoperability was something people thought about begrudgingly or not at all. In fact the business models of all the competitors of the day were based on this thinking, in short the models worked—for a time.
But the internet caused a disruption to this way of thinking. In the enterprise folks had grown frustrated with established hegemony and the Web opened up a new way of thinking. One, it made it easier to write applications that anyone could use. Two, it simplified distribution. But compromises were made around ease of use and productivity often took a back seat to the utility that the internet provided.
In addition, as the utility of the internet spread to consumer focused applications created by a whole new general of developers abandoned the traditional practices of application development—in fact many were never exposed to classic development projects in the first place.
There were benefits to this for all of us. As consumers we could things online or get access to data that previously might have been very difficult, it might be difficult to use these new tools but difficult was better than impossible
This new models made life easier for developers too, they were a step down the path of ‘write-once, run everywhere.’
In the late 90’s however cracks began to appear in this revolution. The concept of being easier for developers did not necessarily mean cheaper. It wasn’t uncommon for early commerce sites for large scale efforts to cost anywhere from 15 million to 100 million US dollars—amounts that almost defy description today. Much of this was because IT in the late 90s was similar to automotive industry in the early parts of the 20th century where there were hundreds of car manufactures competing for consumer’s business, there was no standardization and no interoperability, this made things really hard.
Worse still is what happened when these cobbled together systems actually started generating revenue. It became increasingly difficult to modify or make changes to applications that were mission critical but that were so complex that every feature rollout was the IT equivalent to performing brain surgery where a single mistake could cost millions in lost revenue.
Two things happened that pulled this revolution back from the brink and both of them really boil down to productivity.
One is that developers and software makers started focusing on standards—regardless if the solutions they created were ‘free’ or ‘open’. Web developers demanded it and used technology that was exclusively standards-based and enterprises that required more than standards could provide at least wanted the flexibility to interoperate with these standards and other technology. It’s hard to find any standards-based or proprietary technology today that doesn’t think about interoperability.
The second is that the level of frustration with the usability of technology came to the forefront. It wasn’t just about did an application actually work but could a person actually figure out how to use it.
Both of these drivers have been a key part of the Web 2.0 phenomena with the popularity of AJAX and rich media experiences enabled with things like Flash, Silverlight, etc. It even extends to the power of client software, such as iTunes, WPF applications, AIR applications and other solutions that take advantage of client hardware versus a browser.
I think the next wave of productivity is starting now and it’s focused on productivity in application development and life cycle management and in total cost of investment and return on investment.
When we think about productivity in application development and life cycle management we are really talking about the concept of the ‘Inverted-T’. Which can be defined at the repeatable best practices that we can apply to every project versus re-inventing the wheel. For example why build a content management system when you can buy one or save money implementing an open source option? Why spend money designing a architectural work pattern for a manufacturing facility if you can license one? Why build an authentication system if you can leverage one as a service? This type of thinking represents the horizontal part of the ‘T’. This way of thinking allows us to go deep and focus the majority of our attentions on the parts of our business that allow for differentiation and innovation.
We can also think about life-cycle management. For example does our workflow allow asynchronous round tripping through of projects and assets from designers to developers. Very few workflows do this today, one does (I’ll be polite and not mention them by name). I suspect this type of workflow will become standard in many environments and that in some agile Web processes traditional design tools will be eclipsed by tools that work in the target delivery medium (Vectors versus bitmaps for example or HTML and CSS that don’t need to be factored from static visual designs).
The final dimension in the next wave of productivity is probably services. We already have a myriad of services available to us around commerce, community, identity, location, search but the next wave of services, commonly called ‘cloud’ services are going to go far beyond that. In the future Knowledge Management or email systems might make more sense for many companies if they exist outside of an enterprise’s data center and in a cloud—much like we host many of our Web sites today if we’re a small to mid-size business. These type of moves will start letting developers in the enterprise and smaller entities focus on the core strategies that allow their business to innovate.
We’re starting to see signs of this already in the market. For example look at the ability of a service-based site like Mint.com. Their ability to innovate and role out new features is far more capable that some of their more traditional peers.
Lesser known examples might be click-ones applications that can silently and quickly introduce new features without proactive user activity.
The next post in this topic will dive into services and show how once we’ve taken advantage of the productivity gains that can come in software development and services that we’re ready to set the table for real breakthrough innovation.
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This post is adapted from a paper that appears in the Journal of Business Strategy entitled Cultural Innovation in Software Design: The New Impact of Innovation Planning Methods
Microsoft is a company that historically was guided by a simple premise, “A PC on every desk and in every home.” Microsoft’s role in that premise was simple, to be the creator of the software that would run on those computing platforms, creating every piece of software a consumer would need. As the Economist noted in a July 26th, 2008 Microsoft’s success in this endeavor hinged on two important insights.
The first was that computing could be a high-volume, low-margin business. Until Microsoft came along, the big money was in maintaining a select family of very grand mainframes. Mr. Gates realised that falling hardware costs, combined with the negligible expense of making extra copies of standard software, would turn the computer business on its head…Profit would come from selling a lot of them cheaply, not servicing a few at a great price.”
“Mr. Gates also realised that making hardware and writing software could be stronger as separate businesses. Even as firms like Apple clung on to both the computer operating system and the hardware—just as mainframe companies had—Microsoft and Intel, which designed the PC’s microprocessors, blew computing’s business model apart.
Although it’s difficult to recognize how inspired and innovative this thinking was over 33 years ago it was augmented by another important and unique characteristic of Microsoft in its early days as the Economist continues to elaborate.
The technology industry likes to sneer at Microsoft as a follower. And it is true that the company has time and again bought in or imitated the technology of others…His (Bill Gate’s) genius was to understand what he needed and work out how to obtain it, however long it took. In an industry in which visionaries are often sniffy about anyone else’s ideas, the readiness to go elsewhere proved a devastating advantage.
In effect, Microsoft in its early days was a company that was focused on incremental technology innovation and product optimization. The combination of this one-two punch of innovation in business model and technology enhancement has enabled Microsoft to become one of the most successful and profitable companies in the world.
But as Microsoft prepares to enter the twilight of its fourth decade in existence it faces new challenges that require a fundamental reshaping of its core value offerings and how it will develop and innovate in the realms of software in the future. These challenges include emerging business models focused on advertising supported software, search, open source software, and services. The emergence of new computing form factors in the mobile space and among consumer devices focused on media and entertainment space also are having a dramatic impact on how businesses and consumers perceive and embrace computing in both established and emerging markets.
So…how does Microsoft consider to grow and thrive in this new market where open source and new business models are the disruptive innovation? My next post will look at some of the changes in Microsoft over the past few years that serve as ‘ingredients’ for innovation, and set the table in Microsoft for how to address these challenges.
Quotes from The Economist. (2008, June 26).
The Meaning of Bill Gates. Retrieved July 17, 2008, from
Economist.
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