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General Thoughts

• 06.09.09
  Designers are Evangelists Designer, General Thoughts | (0)

  Do you think designers are evangelists? Outside of the religion context, an evangelist “is a person who enthusiastically promotes or supports something” according to Wikipedia. Based on this definition, we designers are obviously User Experience evangelists. The slide below is from the training that new designers take at Microsoft, which explicitly calls designers are evangelists.  Why is important for designers to be evangelists in their teams? In addition to the reasons provided on the slide, I think it’s the best way for UX design to scale in a software development team. Think about the designer-developer ratio ...
• 04.09.09
  New Design for MSDN Newsletter General Thoughts, UX Design | (0)

  Yesterday we sent out our newly designed MSDN Developer Newsletter. Many of you have already sent your feedback on the new design. Thank you! As you probably noticed, the newsletter is in Beta format now, so we’ll review all your feedback and continue improving the newsletter design and content. This is a significant milestone of our journey to provide you a great online experience. We want to help you connect with our Community Evangelism team and Microsoft at large. There are three major challenges we faced when re-designing the newsletter: MSDN newsletter ...
• 03.23.09
  Guest Post: MIX09 Inspirations: Back to the Drawing Board Bill Buxton, Canadian MIXers, Design, Event, General Thoughts, MIX, Usability, User Experience | (0)

  From now through the end of the MIX09 conference in Las Vegas, Rob Burke will be providing his insights from the conference on a daily basis. Robert Burke is a Toronto-based IT Consultant who’s attending his fourth MIX event this year.  By day he’s knee-deep in Microsoft User Experience technologies, including Silverlight and the Windows Presentation Foundation, but his background includes stuff like artificial intelligence, interactive installations, graphics and ...
• 03.22.09
  Return on Experience – learning from 3 Keynotes General Thoughts, MIX, UX Design | (0)

  I watched three inspiring keynotes this week: two from MIX and Robert Fabricant's Interations’09 keynote. Our guest blogger Robert Burke did a very good job of highlight the MIX keynotes, I want to capture the key things I learned from these keynotes to share with you. Both Deborah Adler and Robert Fabricant’s talks focused on changing people’s behavior through design, which in my opinion is the most impactful Return on Experience (ROE) coined by Bill Buxton. Here’s how I see how the keynote messages come together. Return on Experience 1. What is Experience? It’s not just an object ...
• 12.27.08
  Happy First Day! General Thoughts, inspiration | (0)

  As we are getting ready to celebrate the First Day of 2009, one of my colleagues from Brasil sent me the following note. I really like his way of thinking about First Day. Here I wish everyone Happy New Year and many Happy First Days! Below is an electronic holiday greeting card signed by all my teammates from Microsoft Canada. You can click to see the animated card in Silverlight. The art work of the card is created by a 9-year old girl, Catherine Chen, from Eastview Boys and Girls Club in Toronto. ...
• 12.27.08
  Interaction Designer’s Elevator Pitch General Thoughts, UX Design | (0)

  There's a very interesting discussion thread going on at IxDA forum, called "Interaction Designers: What is your elevator pitch?" I consider myself an Interaction or UX Designer who is evangelize UX to the designer and developer community. Although UX Design is a broader term than Interaction Design because it could be any aspect that affects the user experience of a product, these two terms are often used interchangeably in software design. In many social situations, I need to first give the elevator pitch of what is UX design. My answer has evolved over the years: Q: What is ...
• 11.14.08
  Finding Opportunities in a Recession Economy, PART 3 General Thoughts | (0)

  Note:  This is the third post in a three post series on succeeding as a professional in IT during a recession. Without a doubt, most of us are experiencing the most serious economic recession in our lifetimes.  There's an awful lot of uncertainty that goes with that; everything from our retirement savings, disposable income and job security.  IT as an industry is certainly not immune to these worries and as professionals in this space, I'm sure the concerns I have are similar to those that you are facing.  So, in stressful times like these, what are some ...
• 11.14.08
  Finding Opportunities in a Recession Economy, PART 2 General Thoughts | (0)

  Note:  This is the second post in a three post series on succeeding as a professional in IT during a recession. Without a doubt, most of us are experiencing the most serious economic recession in our lifetimes.  There's an awful lot of uncertainty that goes with that; everything from our retirement savings, disposable income and job security.  IT as an industry is certainly not immune to these worries and as professionals in this space, I'm sure the concerns I have are similar to those that you are facing.  So, in stressful times like these, what are some of the things you ...
• 11.14.08
  Finding Opportunities in a Recession Economy, PART 1 General Thoughts | (0)

  Without a doubt, most of us are experiencing the most serious economic recession in our lifetimes.  There's an awful lot of uncertainty that goes with that; everything from our retirement savings, disposable income and job security.  IT as an industry is certainly not immune to these worries and as professionals in this space, I'm sure the concerns I have are similar to those that you are facing.  So, in stressful times like these, what are some of the things you can do to be successful and how can Microsoft help you achieve that success? Well, to answer that question, let's take ...
• 09.07.08
  The Mojave Experiment General Thoughts, cool projects | (0)

  I'm back from my vacation in China now. In addition to watch Olympics with my family and friends, I did quite a few things I haven't done before like climbing water falls with metal chain, ride on the those bamboo rafts that I saw so many times in Chinese Kungfu shows, flying on top of forest though cable cars. I hope you had some time to relax and recharge in the summer as well.     During the month I was gone, there are several things cumulated that I'd like to talk about. One of them is the Mojave ...

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