dechezette

13 April 09

Microsoft’s Bill Buxton, Return on Experience

Great presentation here from Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. This was from Mix 09 a few weeks back. Silverlight is needed to view.

Bill does a great job articulating the value of experience in the context of design. Like myself, he’s also really big on the value and role of sketching during the design process. He’s even written a book about it.

Allegedly, he’s been brought on to Microsoft to elevate the role of design in the company culture. I have yet to ping a few of my old Microsoft clients to hear their take on this.

The presentation is 20 minutes, but well worth it.

I checked out a few minutes of Scott Guthrie’s presentation which immediately follows. There was a demo of Microsoft’s Expression Web SuperPreview  - which had some cool features for cross-browser programming.

As an aside, I love how Bill’s site is completely, and I’m sure intentionally, stripped-down.

Source: Presentation Zen

A UI an Infant Can Master

My son Roman is 11 months old. In my efforts to keep him entertained in the mornings while mom is trying to catch a few extra winks, I will occasionally let him toy with my iTouch. He very quickly picked up the swipe and flow interaction of the UI. He also very quickly figured out the function of the main button.

Obviously I’m impressed with the little guy for figuring this out at such a young age. But I can’t help but be impressed with Apple as well. After doing a little poking around on YouTube, I found that there are many videos of toddlers with their parents iPhones. Kudos to the UI team at Apple.

09 April 09

Remembering A Friend and Mentor

I learned yesterday of the passing of a great friend, Jimi Black. As one of my first design mentors, I wanted to remember all of the great things about this strange, bizarre, and awesome guiding light that hugely influenced and shaped who am I today.