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.
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.
With cruises being the low-cost vacation alternative, Carnival Cruises is among those not dialing back their marketing spend. This street-side interactive digital aquarium campaign caught my attention. The execution seems a bit rudimentary—but points are given on the concept. My gut reaction was that this tech-focused campaign didn’t speak to their core demographic. I always envisioned the cruise-goers to be my 60 year old accountant. But I was surprised to find out that 25-39 year olds represent a significant group for them - and one that I’d expect holds some growth opportunities in this economy.
I’m going to try to run out and check out the one here in New York.
The National Weather Services mission statement states that it exists to provide its services to aid in the “protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.” Not a small responsibility.
Why is it then that they haven’t updated their communication standards to include upper and lower case in their text advisories. While severe weather is severe weather, WIND ADVISORIES scream at you as much as a TORNADO WATCH. In both cases I’m still likely to PANIC WHEN I READ ALL CAPS and HAVE A DIFFICULT TIME READING IT which FURTHER ADDS TO MY PANIC. In these new days of the Interweb we’re consuming more and more of our timely information on our computers and our mobile devices - all caps doesn’t read quite as well as it did on our old teletypes which we abandoned about 30 years ago.
When people panic they make bad decisions, and bad decisions lead to acts that work against what this agency strives to protect.
Last week Microsoft premiered a vision of the future titled “2019”, and it’s pretty cool.
Not surprisingly surface computing plays a big role — but doesn’t it always in these future stories? It’s typically pretty easy to find flaws in the interaction design of these explorations, but that’s not the point. They provide great inspiration to get the gears fired up and the imagination cooking.
There’s a longer version of the video and some screen shots of the interfaces here — the commenters on this site are a bit skeptical of Microsoft’s ability to deliver on this future.
I am just wondering of they seem to be so good at predicting the future yet always under deliver…
… there seems to be a serious communications breakdown somewhere between innovation and realization…
Let’s cut them a little slack. They delivered Surface - so hey, there’s a shred of proof that good ideas can ... um, surface.