Microsoft just put on an interesting summit bringing together some very different types of people into the same room for a discussion about user experience and software architecture. Jacob Nielson from the Nielson/Norman Group was there, as was Grant Skinner and thought leaders from Adaptive Path, Ovum, Gartner, Yahoo!, Oracle, Rosenfeld Media, Microsoft, Frog Design, and others. 
Some of their conversations are recorded on Adam Richardson’s blog:
Adam Richardson’s Blog – Thoughts on Microsoft Spark UX Summit
as well as on the adaptive path blog and
Simon Guest’s blog.

Very cool software called Photosynth that let’s you view related pictures as a 3D model of what they’re representing. You have to see it for yourself to understand which is both good and bad. Check it out: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=46&p=2&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=afe093ae-b780-4ee0-b0f1-897dfd42f0f9&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f3%2f9%2f0%2f3902e391-734e-470f-806b-4d779f07749f%2fPS_DEMO_320x180_1MB.wmv

Developer Overview of the User Interface for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
MSDN has a new article regarding the new UI for Office 2007 chock full of screen shots and explanations of what they did and why. As I’ve mentioned before, the Office team took a real risk with this and I hope they succeed–and not just because I own MSFT stock.
The longer a product stays around and the further down the version path it goes, the harder it is to change the UI, even when it’s fundamentally flawed. I was the product designer for Flash for a while and there was a lot of resistance internally and externally to any sort of UI change even when customers were clearly asking for somethign. This is one of the main reasons that you’re better off not adding a feature to a product until you really understand how people want to use it and can make sure you get it right.
But I digress… the reason I actually hope this succeeds is two-fold. First, There’s been very little user interface progress IMO in the last decade. The web, in fact, really took us several steps *back* as far as UI functionality goes. We’re only now with AJAX getting anywhere near where we were with the desktop ten years ago. And even with the desktop, I actually think that most of what we take for granted in UI like scrollbars and menus are really poor experiences. For office to get rid of menus altogether is a grand experiment and I hope it succeeds. The second reason I hope it’s successful and that it works well is that so many developers copy whatever Office does–how about that Outlook tab pane? And the point isn’t about who *invented* that UI–for all I know, the ribbon bar could’ve been part of some secret project at Xerox PARC thirty years ago. The point is that when Microsoft does something, many developers and businesses follow. So if Microsoft innovates on its user interfaces it raises the bar for everyone.

So…few will care but I’ve had a fair number of changes recently including moving to Seattle, going to work as a Sr. Product Manager for Microsoft, selling a house, buying a house, buying a car, organizing my trading card collection…ok, not the last one but I think the rest are plenty. So…wait for it…here’s where I apologize for not writing (as if there was a vast audience waiting in agony for my next thoughts.)
Isn’t that the nature of most blogs tho? You’re either apologizing for the lapses in writing for various reasons or you’re just commenting on things that others are actually doing or saying. It’s still interesting as a form of recorded word-of-mouth but writing of any form is at its best when someone has something truly original of significance to say.
Would that history’s writers such as Seneca or John Ruskin or Voltaire had had blogs… I think that Dickens, Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, and Mark Twain would have been top notch. Any other nominations?

So we had the new Macromedia Studio 8 ship yesterday and then today at PDC the Expression family of tools was released. Now I may be biased (I work at Microsoft now and I worked at Macromedia for several years) but I’d say Designers are getting a lot of love this week.
Because as fun as all these new tools are, that’s not even the best thing I’ve seen this week for Graphic Designers, Interaction Designers, Usability experts, etc.

Continue reading A Good Day To Be A Designer →

I’m at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference today and watched Bill Gates unveil various products including recent builds of Windows Vista. But the big surprise (other than the great video featuring Bill Gates and Napolean Dynamite as roommates) was the new UI in Office 12.

Read my lips: no new menus.

Actually, there were no menus at all. I haven’t had the chance to play with the new suite myself but the demos this morning showed a surprising new UI for Office that had replaced all application menus with graphical palettes.
I had expected to yawn through the presentation of Office 12. Instead, I was struck by a burning desire to play with it immediately. I have a healthy fear of pre-beta software though (learned the hard way) so I’ll settle for being one of the first in line for the beta.
In the meantime, I’m pondering the ramifications to users and wondering whether this will become a trend or not. These apps are some of the most widely used apps in the world and their last significant UI innovation (toolbars) was eight years ago—practically a lifetime in this industry. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this but either way, it’s exciting to see what might be a widespread step forward in desktop software user experience.
You can read more about the rationale and research behind it here and, even better, check out hi-res images of each of the Office products.
Stay tuned tomorrow and Wednesday for more surprises.