Ever sat on a project and heard someone give their account as to why the user base won’t like xyz feature or UI change? Ever sat in a cubicle and listen to someone rail against the idea of change for fear it would upset the user base to the point where the helpdesk would be flooded with “Please Explain” calls.

Surrogate User – people used as a substitute or representative for users, in order to provide information in design meetings, user testing, and so forth.

The reality is this, end users are surprising beasts and often will surprise you in what they can and can’t do. The end user especially in enterprise is so used to crap-tac-ula software day in day out that anything really that you do as of today onwards is highly likely to be much simpler to what they are used to (especially given the consumerism within Enterprise these days). Furthermore should they dislike the software they aren’t likely to all abandon their jobs simply because of a bad UX decision – as 9/10 they are under duress around crappy software decisions made by other teams anyway.

Instead, the end user is probably thirsty as ever for software that feels simpler to use and actually looks like someone took the time to think about them and their needs instead of how it solves one finite problem only. Software’s job is to react to the end user, not make the user react to it!

End users are also making use of a variety of software so whilst one particular UI pattern that has been adopted is “the way they are used to today” doesn’t necessarily mean they are ignorant of all other UI patterns out there on the market.

The key is to leverage existing muscle memory as much as you can today and less showing off on what you can and can’t do with some of the UX Platforms at your disposal. Be creative but don’t be overly creative, you get no points for showing off.

Layer-in complexity is what I always tell people, as it’s much harder to reduce complexity later than it is to bring it in slowly. It’s also the best discussions to have, as if the business or end users are complaining that the software is too simple – which let’s be clear, I dream of these discussions – then you have more of a baseline to draw from going forward around feature weighting and selection (which plays into UX + Agile in a way).

The surrogate user is someone you should fear in all software projects as they often bring pre-existing bad habits forward and lastly suffer from the “I’m in touch with my audience” arrogance (sometimes without realizing. I’m told that a Surrogate User when done right works, i’m yet to see one of these unicorn beasts, but i’m told just the same.

Whenever I hear someone say “Users don’t like..” my first instinct is to respond “Oh? Did 1 in 5 housewives tell you that or is this something you’re just making assumptions on?” – Meaning is this “I think” or is it “I know”.

Surrogate Users are dangerous unless they are moderated by someone who has the “UX” somewhere buried in their resume, as they can often decode the “personal bias” from the science of what these entities represent.

Related Posts:

• Your own Mulit-touch Surface Prototypeboard-thingy.
• Silverlight Installation / Preloader Experience – BarnesStyle.
• UX Tip: Just because you can count change, doesn’t make you a mathematician

Let me explain, there is a partition between me and my co-worker which used to be a locker of some sort (no idea actually). It’s pretty high in terms of size and given its between the co-worker and I it’s kind of suddenly become our meet/greet tabletop.

On top of this partition is a mini-whiteboard that we have (approx 50cm wide and 50cm high) and it’s fast become our “hey got an idea for the UI” or “hey need some help with OOP composition” meeting point. We typically sketch out our problem/idea and then proceed to – yes you heard it first – communicate with one another on what’s possible etc.

We often call it the poor-mans Surface table as a joke, but in reality if i were to work on a Surface / iPad etc style application it’s this little whiteboard I’d love to have in the room. As I’m then able to sketch out the ideas and walk others through it via old skool pen + paper mode but at the same time can allow quicker iterations then “can you hand me that eraser” or “let me get another sheet of paper” ..

Anyway, thought I’d share this little eco-friendly prototyping tool for all to think about.

Related Posts:

• Silverlight Installation / Preloader Experience – BarnesStyle.
• UX Tip: Just because you can count change, doesn’t make you a mathematician

Situation is simple, you’re someone who has been brought into a project at its last witching hour, there are not a lot of project management fundamentals in the room and everyone is constantly emphasizing the “we have to get this done, no time” analogies and metaphors at you. What do you do? How do you navigate this and salvage what’s left of the project to turn this around into a productive and usable solution.

Answer is Microsprinting.

The past 6 months now, I’ve been constantly brought into projects that have gone off the rails for one reason or another and it typically comes back to scope creep and lack of discipline in terms of leadership or more to the point communication.

This is why SCRUM is a concept that every developer should borrow ideas at the very least from, it’s not so much a rule book but a communication protocol that all can agree to and figure out ways not to bump into one another.

That being said, setting up sprints that go for week(s) are great but when you’re faced with a deadline that is measured in hours whilst having to also work back from an unmovable deadline you simply need to calibrate your effort to a micro format.

The List.

The way forward is this. You first analyze all the features that were expected to be in the release for the project, don’t worry about who did what wrong or where it went pair shape. Sit down, take a deep breath and focus on getting a list together that outlines all the features needed to be done. Take this list and break it down to a point where it’s not to finite but at the same time granular enough that all can accurately see what the effort ahead looks like.

The wireframes aren’t the spec.

A lot of times I see wireframes and folks are looking at these and going “Ok, I need that wireframe to be designed” which is a perfectly valid request, in reality though as an interactive designer your job is to not just paint pixels here but also decide on how the moving parts become interactive. More to the point, you’re also analyzing each of the boxes that say “news” and thinking about how the data template will look per item in the ListBox and so on, you really need to map this out per screen and come up with a fairly comprehensive list of both the interactive specification as well as a list of visual states that need to be designed end to end.

I say this as a box on a wireframe can turn quite dramatically into 2-6hrs worth a work depending on which direction the interactive designer decides – “Ok this box when clicked now will go to this screen and the transition needs to be fade along with a loading of individual boxes to lead the user as to what’s change in an elegant fashion etc”

Break the wireframes into detail as again the project is off the rails you don’t have time to sit back and create high fidelity prototypes for each wireframe around its interactivity. You simply need to outline what’s likely to be the effort and do the best you can to not screw up given the constant variables of time/budget is much shorter than you’d ideally like to work towards.

8 is the number, not 7 or 6 or 2…

Break your day into 8hr segments and these are effectively the Microsprints. Every 8hrs regroup and triage what needs to be done and what has been done, agree and move onto the next microsprint. It’s also important that you work with a stack ranked list, keep it simple, rank it from 1 to whatever and attack the list one by one until you get to the finish.

Chances are you may have 100 items but in reality given the timeframes are short whilst the budgets are tight; you’re effectively likely to end up with 70 items done at the end of the deadline.

It’s time to start sacrificing and yeah it sucks but if the project had of been mapped out properly from the start you’d have the full 100. The reality is its off the rails, you got to start triaging in a cold but fair way sort through the items that are going to have a chance of life and simply send flowers/apologies to those who want the items that aren’t likely to have a chance at life in this project.

Tough decisions but necessary ones.

Stakeholders are likely to be suffering from denial. “I wanted that box. Can’t we just..” the moment I hear “can’t we just..” is the part where I stop and think to myself “ok, is this a new idea or is this simply a creative way of trying to get agreement on something that just can’t be done”.

It’s now a point in time where you have 6 things on the table and you can only have 3. Choose as if you fail to make these tough decisions now, you will end up having less – it’s a reality and fact.

Don’t shoot the project manager.

At some point the project is off the rails, someone steps up and says “ok, I’m now leading this band of misfits”. It’s important that someone lead, but it’s also equally important that all understand that this is probably one of the worst positions to be in now. Projects off the rails remember, someone just stood up and said “I’ll now assume responsibility for this delivery from here on out” – give them the benefit of the doubt as they just did something you weren’t willing to do yourself.

They may say no more than yes, they may ask you to sacrifice your core beliefs on how things should be done in order for a Band-Aid or two. It sucks, but deadline is looming and having a 115 lines of code to do something that can be done in two may piss you off, but ship it. Ship it is the goal, refactor later.

Learn from your mistake.

Typically after I leave everyone has that exhausted look on their face, chances are some of the folks in the team will vow never to work with one another again. Emotions were high, we got it done, it wasn’t great but we got success.

Put your pettiness aside, understand this, it was a group failure that later turned into a group success. You just accomplished something that not a lot of teams can do, you made the deadline.

The thing is also, that whilst you know there is around 30 items off the list, and chances are the end users have no clue as to what those 30 items were. You’re just beating yourself up over a quality issue vs. an actual specific requirement.

Should that requirement manifest into a missing feature, you have the next round now ahead of you only this time, PLAN it.

Get the interactive designer into the planning meetings early; don’t leave the design to last. The interactive designer is responsible for the look, feel and way this user interface is going to interact. The UI designer is the person who will paint the pixels per state and lastly your user experience / usability rock star is the one who will navigate the cognitive science associated to the UI.

If you find a person who can do all three, lock them in and don’t let them leave. If you can’t find a person to do any of the above, start hitting Amazon and start researching as one of you needs to assume that position and take responsibility early for it.

Developers need leadership, someone needs to be the Program Manager, make them accountable for features getting to developers hands early. Project / Release managers are there to co-ordinate what should come first and lastly when.

You can have SCRUM approach, but democracies are only as good as its people. If the people aren’t clued into its virtues, see the above.

Learn from what you did wrong, don’t nail people to the cross for it..just learn from it.

Embrace MVVM.

If you’re doing Silverlight/WPF no excuses use it now. Don’t screw around, get onto it now. A friend said to me yesterday “..Dude, saying MVVM is half the understanding, once they’ve said it then they now know it..i mean Model..View…ViewModel whats the mystery?”

It’s a basic foundation for all to work towards and it’s just easy to set things in order in a solution.

Related Posts:

• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Can you mix UX with Agile?

Which are you? a developer or designer?

How far we have come and yet how so little we have learnt! As someone who worked in/with the Silverlight/Expression teams to make sure the message that Microsoft has entered the UX space and that we’re essentially building a mutated Developer meets Designer and vice versa pixel ninja type person, the reality is people still need to put you into a category.

I often find myself torn between which side of that fence line I sit. As to be blunt i can do both, I know every single API inside Silverlight/WPF like the back of my hand, I can code in 9 languages outside of .NET and aren’t script kiddy languages either. I can do 3D and 2D design to the point where many have commented on my abilities here as being “eye for design” or “you are freakish good” but still i’m tormented by having to pigeonhole myself either category.

The reality is people aren’t ready to accept the person who can do both just yet and it takes a lot of proof to build trust that you can do both. I’ll let you know how I go with this journey over time but for now suffice to say, its new territory for me and yet still profitable as I can easily pick left or right and just swim in either pool where needed.

I need a UX guy urgently.

I’ve seen this a lot in the past 8 months. I get called in at the last sprint or towards the end of a project and find myself having to triage features vs design vs engineering constraints. It’s the worst time to engage a UX/UI person(s) as in the end you’re asking for a Hail Marry – “can you make this UI look good and functional oh and don’t change the code base in the process?” is a common brief.

The trick I’ve learnt is that I can do it, it just takes a lot more patience and focus –, and you really need to know every single backdoor into Blend as well as the Silverlight/WPF API’s. IT is a challenge but can be a success   if there is enough time  and the communication is clear and expectations are set properly.

The bottom line is folks – Engage early and often. Even if its just 1 or 2hrs of their time per week or day, make sure you have someone in the room who bleeds UI/UX from the beginning of the project. Don’t engage late as the price will go up you won’t be able to salvage as much as you think by then  it’s not a UX consultation its just a pixel polish.

I don’t use Blend, just Visual Studio.

You are breaking my design heart when you say this to me. Everybody right now who reads this open up Blend and pick a fight with it. If you take the time to get to know it and get to know it well, then when used right can help you out enormously with both Silverlight and WPF development. If you’re a person who likes to indent and keep their XAML neat, stop right now, you are trying to skate up hill.

XAML is not meant to be a hands-on language. It’s a common data format created to allow Design and Code tools to work against the same model without giving up their inherent capabilities. If you are editing it by hand just stop as you are not doing it right.

Pick a color any color.

The amount of times I’ve walked into an engagement and seen a rainbow of colors in the UI has left me thinking that it’s not so much a lack of will power around design it’s more the reality that not everyone is up to speed with color theory (there is a science to color selection).

The easiest tip I give people is this. Typically a brand has one or two colors that are used the majority of the time,  then they  will use white or black for the majority of the content depending on the background composition (white for dark, and black for light). When you design a User Interface for your next Silverlight/WPF project, pick one or two colors and create a ResourceDictionary called [ThemeName]Colors.

Then take that color and break into four shades (2x dark, darker and 2x light, lighter). Now then select what I call your chrome colors, these are the colors you would use for the outer chrome of your UI, in windows its typically around 4x shades of gray (light, lighter, dark, darker) and label them accordingly (i.e. chrmeAccent1, chrmeAccent2) etc. Keep your color naming conventions abstract (use camel or Pascal case – whatever lights your design candle).

Now don’t use any more colors. Lock that in and use these. Don’t deviate at all from this plan unless you have a designer person in the room who is held responsible for retaining the product/projects brand.

Lastly and this is the most important thing I can say to developers world wide:- Don’t use bold colors. Stick to pastel or light colors as you’re typically not ready for the hurdles that bold colors can throw at you. In saying this I did also notice that the MetroTheme that Microsoft has put into play has me a little nervous as it relies heavily on bold color scheming – which is great and cheap way of avoiding depth in a UI but at the same time creates a potential color scheming hazard around highlights vs lowlights and focal areas of your GUI composition.

Typography is also another concern of mine as too much reliance of ye olde text can put UI two steps back instead of forward – people don’t like to read in general, visuals often handle the workload – review the many articles available on “extraneous cognitive load” for proof of this.

MVVM that is all.

I get that some of you want to get gung-ho with PRISM, MEF or your own framework. Bottom line is this, if you’re starting out and haven’t figured out the tricks and hacks just yet of WPF/Silverlight then you are better off  sticking to  simple MVVM. It handles 90% of your workload and doesn’t require you to learn  WPF/Silverlight and an extra layer of complexity at the same time.

Keep it simple, work to the idea that the code you write in the first year of WPF/Silverlight is code you will want to throw away or refactor later on. It’s natural you write bad code or work onto something that a year later you’ll look back on and proudly say “What was i thinking”. You’ve got your Microsoft UX training wheels on, embrace this openly and you’ll do just fine. Walk into a room and pretend you have it all under control and you’ll fold eventually as you can’t credibly hold that facade for too much longer.

If you can also check out AutoFac as well, this again will compliment your codebase nicely. MEF/PRISM are really for folks who have a team of engineers and are looking to build a complex mammoth size system – that’s the reality even if Microsoft try to deliver a different message  – I’m an ex Microsoft Product Manager so I can spin with the best of them hehe.

UI and UX are two different things.

I need to say this out loud. If you ask someone to do UI, then they will do just that; focus on designing a user interface for an existing concept. If you need someone to wireframe and help you figure out how the whole user interface can be built, that’s where a UX person comes in. They are two different work streams just like a developer and a DBA are different.

You can find people who do both, but keep that in mind.

Oh, I need someone local.

Yes, having someone onsite is definitely a goal a team should always be on the hunt for. SCRUM teams etc benefit from this and it doesn’t need to be evangelized further. I will say however though, having someone working remotely can be just as effective especially a guy like me in Australia.

I say this, as at the moment I’m working on a project with Microsoft and it’s working out in our favor as while they sleep I work, while they work I sleep and we’re able to have a show & tell (i.e. remote stand-up) with one another where the design and development work can meet in the middle actually pretty well. As I’m able to say “ok here’s what I’ve done for you, its in your inbox when you wake up” and in the afternoons they’re able to go “ok, here’s what I need for you to start my day tomorrow” and so the cycle is a 24hr development run that works quite well.

It’s not for everyone but so far I’ve found  it works without any issues other than an expensive mobile/cell bill from my end lol.

Show me some of your work?

There’s a reason why painters and builders never work on their own house – same goes for me. This blog as weak as it looks is still the  front door  for my company – RIAGENIC. I need to get off my ass this month and put my site up but the problem I have is distilling what I do into a webpage that makes sense as I’m my worst client (picky, arrogant and will agonize over every pixel and paragraph in the site).

I also need to find  a way to promote me but at the same time associate myself with a brand, so that for me is a tricky marketing hurdle. I’ll soon see if I can pull it off!

Find people you can trust and don’t have to babysit.

I’ve worked with a lot of developers in my time, nothing annoys me more than baby sitting incompetence. I’m fine with newbies learning the ropes, that I find far more rewarding as you’re working with someone who has passion and a determination to learn. It’s the people who are lazy and expect you to spoon feed them every 5mins on “how”. I didn’t learn Cinema4D by sitting next to a 3D wizard and ask “Ok so how do I write an xpresso script that makes the wheels rotate per frame”, I sat on Google and the objective was this “Find how to make wheels rotate in xpresso” and eventually I found it. Along the way I learnt a lot about Cinema4D and Xpresso as i was hunting for my answers.

If you work with me, I will set the benchmark high per person I meet, I will quickly assess your skill set and then raise the bar to challenge you to meet it as I do want to work with people who get it and are smart at what they do.

That being said, I love nothing more than coming into a cubicle of developers and feeling like I’m the newbie in the room as now I’m in learning from others mode.

At the moment I’m working with Joseph Cooney (one of WPF’s first MVP and of learnwpf.com fame). I’m learning heaps from interacting with this guy, and its a fun project at the moment we are on. I don’t have to babysit him and he doesn’t have to babysit me. We just looked at the specifications, agreed on a solution structure and boom, were’ off grinding pixels and code.

The next job I go to where they need a WPF/Silverlight dev etc, Joseph is one i’d recommend – again, its about networking and building relationships and finding people who you can trust and work alongside.

Reputation is a false economy.

I often hear how folks worry over their reputation. I’ve watched people spend way to much time either building or recovering it from a bad project etc. The simple truth to this from what I’ve learnt is that if you know your work, you approach things with openly and honesty and don’t dump and run as well as admit mistakes, you’ll come out fine.

Just focus on doing good work, reputation has a habit of following and self regulating itself over time.

At times people I’ve heard bad things about on a project often aren’t the ones at fault as  the recruiter / business development sales person didn’t set expectations appropriately or the project was a train wreck well before this person arrived and they were the last ones to hold the steering wheel as it went off the road.

Agile/SCRUM is not a religion.

I’ve seen a lot of developers follow this concept by the book to the point where I often wonder if they are conscious of how badly they have gotten. The correct way and the natural way are two different things and in the end communication is the core piece to this.

Stop arguing over protocol and just focus on establishing a clear line of communication and work on getting estimations as close as you can while at the same time admitting to your fellow team mates the moment you can’t do something or are over on your estimate – just put up your hand and say a simple word – “help”. I personally work under the assumption I’m the dumbest guy in the room, it keeps me calibrated and if you work with me and think “geez i thought that guy knew all of this” that’s fine, but i probably do, but i’ll ask anyway just to make sure.

I’ve felt the wrath of a false hero before, and I ended up having to do his work and mine at the same time only to be burnt for it later on. I could of thrown this person under a bus and said “well actually it was his fault” but in reality, I just absorbed the blame and avoided working with this person since.

That is all.

Note: I am a UX/UI Ninja for hire.

Contact me at scott at this domain.

Related Posts:

• Context and Experience Matters.
• My Slides: Microsoft UX: What Just Happened
• Silverlight is creating a mutant designer who can code.
• Microsoft: Stop the shiny object syndrome.
• Project Salvaging is Microsprinting

When I first saw the early specs of Windows Mobile 7 before I left Microsoft, i was little jaded with the whole level of commitment to the UX. As initially I’m thinking that this is just simply an extension to Zune, that the reality is it’s much cheaper and easier to take the existing work for Zune and bolt it onto the Windows Mobile OS. Problem solved move on, cheap, easy, effective and done.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it for me is what I’d call a stabilize move and not a leap frog move. If the objective for the Windows Mobile 7 launch is to stabilize the bleeding, than the current iteration of the phone will do that and will do it in a way that will be declared a success. That is until the next generation of Apple comes off the assembly line and then the race is back on again.

The UX

I think the UX is flat and is often obvious that the team are to busy trying to “own” their own UI and less about meeting a base benchmark. What i mean by this, is that it appears that the UI is trying a little too hard to do the opposite of the iPhone, like it’s a challenge they need to rise up against. Examples like no Icons, panning up/down instead of left / right for content etc seems to pack a little too much anti-iPhone. You can argue “we did a lot of research and 1 in 5 housewives preferred up and down over left and right”, which is meh, as I’ve seen how easily it is to manipulate usability to suit ones messaging (been there, done that, got the t-shirt).

I think sprinkling the Zune and mini-XBOX into the device will definitely grab peoples attention as i truly think the market is hungry for NOT an iPhone, so Microsoft may very well appeal to the folks who are bored with the iPhone as being this years fashionable technology must-have gadget.

That is until iPhone 4 comes out, and again i think this will raise the bar once again for Microsoft to meet and can they deliver? I think given the plain UX for the phone today, I think they stand a much greater chance of reacting to market conditions in a way that has low impact on development times as there’s less complexity in the room due to the over use of simplicity in the device.

Danger is, you’re left holding the current incarnation of Windows Mobile 7 and looking at the next generation of iPhone and go “aggh..i want that”, as make no mistake devices are really energising the “shiny object” buyers in today’s market.

For me, this is the Windows Vista launch, as after some code resets and downward pressure from above this is almost exactly the same internal conditions Windows Vista team had before their launch, “get it to market, get it fast and we’ll come back around for the bits we wanted to put in place”.

Apple are likely to react to this in a way that is going to be an interesting battle, as Apple is to iPhone as Windows is to Microsoft, so in a sense they are now fully engaged head to head with Microsoft once the device reaches the market.

Microsoft are playing hardball as well as you’ll most likely hear more about how Flash + Windows Mobile will play a role going forward and lastly they’ve yet to talk more deeply about how Silverlight 4 will play a role with the device as well (stay tuned for that, as this will get the developer propellers going).

In the end though, will this light up the soccer mums of tomorrow? probably, its new, it will be cheaper than the iPhone most likely and the Zune subscription model is quite palatable for the market. Zune Marketplace is where I think this device will live or die, if Microsoft gets the subscription model to work outside the US, then we’re in for a real threat to iTunes and iDevices world wide, as its definitely game on. The reason why Zune Market Place is a nicer approach is that its an appealing solution to Music/Movie piracy, as instead of people having to pay $$ for each individual song/movie etc, having a subscription model per month for all you can eat is less friction (especially for teenagers who can’t get access to credit cards)

Verdict.

I’d give the overall story an 7/10, I think the UX is weak and will face some challenges around usability, but overall the concept itself and how it ties in with other services from around the web is where it will most likely get its main momentum from.

Today, everyone is in the Microsoft “Zone” where its drink from the kool-aid, which is really an off signal response to a new products entry to the market. Two months from now, the reviews that are then talked about are the ones that are likely to stick and be consistent and they are truly the signal to the noise. This is where the Windows Mobile 7 team will need to bring their A-Game back and distil the message into  what’s coming next more so than what’s happened today.

Jokes aside, the UI still reminds me of Windows 3.11 where its very EGA 2D. is that good or bad? is it a design revolution where we kind of wind back the clock and go 80’s meets 2010, I don’t know. I do know I wanted more, I was hungry for more and i’m in a temper of a mood for not having my hunger satisfied.

Will I buy one?

Yup. As I’ll do it simply because I’m a Silverlight / Flash UX guy and would love to tinker with a device that supports these two. Once again, Microsoft the engineering culture comes through and user experience takes a backseat.

Related Posts:

• Microsoft: Stop the shiny object syndrome.
• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Adobe, you lose.
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil
• Silverlight Installation / Preloader Experience – BarnesStyle.

Grab a beer, wine, Red Bull whatever your liquid of choice that kind of breaks you out of your mundane existence and sit down and watch the following videos. I guarantee you that if you’re not excited enough to crack open Flash, Silverlight, AfterEffects, Photoshop or whatever your software poison of choice is, then well, this space is simply something you’re not going to be great at – maybe good, but never great.

Warning: Do not sit too close to your monitor as drooling has been known to occur

(1) First

. Let’s do a lap around Mark Coleran’s private collection, I despise this guy’s talent and the constant opportunities he got to work on these projects and never once did he Skype me before hand asking for a chance to do them. *waves fist at Mark, damn you..daaaamn you!*..

Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.

(2) Second

Microsoft has been slammed recently for lack of creative innovation. Look, its mostly true, the company does fumble a lot around this space but every now and then, they outsource to the right agency who manages to tell a story that exceeds peoples expectations of what the company is capable of. Microsoft Sustainability video by Oh, Hello in Seattle, is an example of this. If you suddenly don’t get all excited about Silverlight/WPF after this, then you’re just not into Microsoft.

(3) Third

This ones a local vision, but its from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). It’s there vision on how the future will look via the CBA. The comedian in me chuckles a little at the notion that if I ring the hotline i get an immediate answer from a bank manager, but, it’s not about that its about painting a vision and for that, I’ll bank with CBA. Would love to know which agency did this? (Anyone know?)

(4) Fourth

Back to Mr Coleran, he’s done it again that talented so and so  (UPDATE: Not Mark Coleran, its from Peter Menich and 27Forty Studios for Alcatel). I like this one as I look at the concepts used and I see a lot of commonality in patterns used in either today’s UI’s as well as some of the future UI’s that others have through-up as well. My thinking is that if its a common collective vision it stands a greater chance of becoming reality.

(5) Fifth

I love this concept of how mainstream media like magazine can be turned into more of a interactive experience – in that no longer just static pieces of information. Kindle, iPad, Courier etc are all hinting in this space so its not that far removed from fantasy vs reality.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

(6) Sixth

This one is kind of weird, I kind of feel like Homer Simpson in that episode he finds his facial features in a Japanese Video and getting freaked out but excited at the same time. I don’t mind this one as it kind of goes to the extreme end on how Augmented Reality could occur should the right eyewear or face shield be built (think IRONMAN). (Thanks to: infocycde for the link)

(7) Seventh

This is the minority report come to life, and its exactly how a concept that Mark Coleran worked on in a movie suddenly appears in real life, again, FUI meets reality. Thanks Mark for the heads up on this one!

oblong’s tamper system 1801011309 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

(8) Eighth.

Cynergy Systems have put together a brilliant presentation of how a portable device meets a surface table, whilst allowing a buying style concept to occur. It makes me think that whilst everything these days is pushing to be online that with this concept a store owner can still exist, but the physical component to a store doesn’t have to exist. In that you go into a store, speak with the store owner etc and simply drag the book into your device for purchase etc. I like this concept and what’s cool also about it is the fact its already done, it’s not so much a Fantasy User Interface for the future.

(9) Ninth

.<insert your find here> If you know of other showreels like this, please send me an email or drop a comment below with the URL, as I want to build out this page to include them all. I want them like a crack addict needs a new fix.

Related Posts:

• Windows Mobile 7 the “meh” release.
• FUI – Igniting the Fantasy User Interface spark.
• My Slides: Microsoft UX: What Just Happened
• Interview with Mark Coleran.
• Revolutionary Incremental UX Going unnoticed.

One consistent theme I often see a lot is the over-use of DataGrids. DataGrids are being used pretty much majority of the time to present any if not all large amounts of data and it absolutely baffles me personally as to why developers keep gravitating towards them?

I say this, mainly as you’re given a solution like Silverlight where its actually your job to simplify the end user’s experience – yet the first chance some get, “Let’s grab the ye olde DataGrid with sortable columns and snap it into place”

DataGrids have a very small niche of usage rights in my opinion when it comes towards User Experience. What I mean is, should you have a need to make your own Excel Spreadsheet, sure, I can see the need (sortable columns and all).

Otherwise, stop. Use ListBox’s instead of DataGrids.

The difference between a ListBox and a DataGrid visually is obvious – DataGrid is multiple columns, ListBox is one. The major significant mindset adjustment for a ListBox is that it dares both the developer and end user to think about the problem being solved in that current piece of software.

An example that comes to mind and is quite common is Outlook 2007.

On the left you have a tree like situation, this is your first line of defence against dense data. It essentially forces you as an end user to think in terms of contextual categories regarding your email traffic.

The next column is typically a list of emails separated based on Date (Most commonly) but again, this is your second layer of defence regarding unnecessary dense data.

Last is the body of the email itself, basically this is your main end point “ahah, now i can get down to work”.

I like to use this as one of many examples of how a DataGrid vs ListBox could go off the deep end. In this example you’ve provided the ability for the end user to both narrow their filtering (self-selection in the wild) and secondly you’ve addressed the overall problem in a way that isn’t to restrictive or requires a lot of mental processing to parse for that email sent “last week”.

It’s concept also caters to both large and small data sets, as should you have an inbox like I did when I was at Microsoft, it was pretty much 1000’s of emails a day.

Today I have smaller inbox (yay) but the problem getting access to emails from the past hasn’t changed. In this approach to UI, i’m still able to sort/parse the said emails but should the data not yield an obvious “at first glance” hunt for that email of ages past, I can enter a search term – that or – sort the data on a more contextual level (narrowing down the data ).

Search is probably the area I use the most in Outlook as i’m often going “Oh crap, Sarah sent me an email last week, it had something to do with X customer…” I then type in “Sarah X Customer” and already my hunt is narrowed and the chase begins.

You can do the same with DataGrids, don’t get me wrong. DataGrids however get quite busy and cumbersome once you go beyond 1 line of text. In that, we humans typically aren’t happy to read horizontally – it has to do with the fact we prefer to parse things vertically than horizontally and especially on wide columns. It gives the impression that its “heavy or more work” vs vertical can give you more of a feeling of being “quick to parse” (Ever wonder why news papers do this?)

Bottom line is this. DataGrids should really be left to narrow specific areas of use, typically for fiscal data that has a lot of calculations to review – that or UI’s that make use of 1 line of text much like Apple’s email client does below.

Having said all of that, I still often see teams of folks praise the DataGrids that have heirachy’s of sub-grids as a “better way” to represent the data. It can be quite frustrating to see this, but I simply take it on the chin, take a deep breathe and try and sway them to focusing on the said problem from a different angle where the mandate/objective is to simplify the density of the data.

Less is more when it comes to UI, parsing large amounts of information gets tedious and is more prone to human error than user interfaces that handle a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

I have an Icon fetish that is disturbingly wrong. In that I collect them, horde them and would happily spend Microsoft’s good hard earned money on as many of them as I can find – if allowed.

Yet, what makes Icon’s so special? in that why do they enhance an applications user interface to the point where it almost is lost without them. Why does Microsoft and Apple spend a lot of money and time ensuring that menu navigation and icon’s are done in a manner that’s not only attractive to the eye, but enhance a users experience?

Well, I decided to ask our UX folks, the same folks whom chose Icons for our operating systems, software applications and so on. I had one intent, to get to the bottom of this whole Icon business and more to see where Icon’s can play a role in tomorrows RIA. RIA is going to embrace the icon market, something I have now doubt and so with this, onto the top 10 questions with Frank Bisono & Brittnie Hervey (UX demi-gods).

Top 10 Questions for the Icon Ninja’s here at Microsoft.

Q1. What is an icon?, in that we all see them daily in software but what does the icon represent to the end user? 

Brittnie: An icon represents an action a user will take.

Frank: For our purposes, an icon would be a graphical representation (small picture or object) for a file, application or command (action).  For the end user it should be an easy way to quickly identify what product they are in and what action they could take on a given object.

Q2. When you choose an icon, what is the process that you go through in selecting the right one?

Brittnie:         In Vista there is set usages for every icon that we define when created.  We align the concept of the functionality the user is taking to the best visual representation we can get based on elements rather than words.

Frank:          So generally you don’t just have the luxury of choosing a pre-existing icon here.  For most products or features, we create a custom icon.  On the server side, this means literally THOUSANDS of icons.  We follow the same process as Brittnie described above.  That generally means meeting with a PM and translating the description for this icon into a graphical representation.  Sometimes we have existing elements that we re-use to create an icon, other times, it’s a completely custom concept and we start from scratch.

Q3. Microsoft has released some guidelines around designing icon’s, do you feel that the icon design community adhere to these? 

Brittnie: I believe it depends on group and situation.  Our current guidelines do not map 1 to 1 to what MS sets as guidelines.  I think we adhere when appropriate.  This is a harder question to answer.

Frank:          If you mean the design community OUTSIDE of Microsoft, well – it all depends.  We haven’t put out the most robust set of guidelines I’ve seen, but they are generally a pretty good start.  The main problem I have seen with regards to icons is that sometimes the importance of an icon is overlooked.  There are the obvious visual aspects of creating an icon, but then there are also things to consider such as geopolitical issues that can come back to haunt a developer or studio.  The last thing you want to do is insult a particular culture with the use of an icon that has a detrimental meaning to them.  I’ve also seen updates to products that continue to use icons developed for an older platform like XP.  If you are targeting your application to run in Vista, then you need to refresh the icons to match the visual style we have set for Vista (the aero style).  The last thing I’ll note is that all too often I’ve seen folks take a shortcut and use an icon designed for use at say 256×256 and they scale it down to fit a 16×16 block.  Or even worse, they upscale an icon.  That just doesn’t fly.  There are a number of reasons why you can’t just shrink an icon in Photoshop and call it a day, and the same goes for sizing an icon up.  At the end of the day, it just doesn’t look good.

Q4. I’ve always said that the icon market is ripe for the picking giving the technology going forward, where do you foresee this market going and is there room for icons in formats such as XAML? 

Brittnie:         I foresee icons becoming less important and the UI itself becoming more self explanatory.  With that being said I don’t think icons will ever go completely away, just less needed. 

Frank:          The icon market is definitely getting more advanced.  We are now seeing icons as large as 512×512 directly in the UI and with much richer detail than ever.  I totally see a future with dynamic icons that change as the application’s state changes.  As the graphics engines in our OS get better, so too will the use of icons and the value they can bring to the OS or application.  That’s just one example.  As far as XAML, there’s definitely something to be said there as well.  Right now if you take an icon created in Illustrator, you could export that as XAML and drop that right into code using Expression Blend. After all, a vector is nothing more than a mathematical computation rendered as a graphic right?  But another way to drop that into XAML is by defining a brush in Blend with an icon image and then using that brush in Blend (this is for when you only have a bitmap icon for example).  The “icon” does ok at scaling, but there is room for improvement using that technique.  XAML is definitely going to present some interesting possibilities moving forward with WPF applications.  We are still WAY early in defining that, but as we move more towards a WPF based environment, you will see more attention being given to XAML Icons.

Q5. I have an icon fetish, i just seem to store them, 1000’s of them. Do you also have hordes of icons tucked away on your hard drive and what is it you look for in the design styles?

Brittnie: No, I do not have many different icons I store on my hard drive but we do have thousands tucked away on a sever/share.  The design style is the same for all the icons we create, as we have the Vista guidelines we follow.  I only collect those icons. J

Frank:          Well, I’m not going to lie here, I am a total icon fanboi  I literally have TENS of THOUSANDS of them hoarded away on my drives at home.  I’ve been collecting them for years.  I just love customizing my desktop and folders using custom icons.

Q6. OSX and Windows Vista have a unique design style to both, and lately the "Glass Effect" plays a role in design style(s). Why is this so? and do you have any thoughts on the next upcoming fashionable style? 

Brittnie: I believe this is because it is a new visual style that you don’t see in a lot of places, and it gives the icons an extra bang.  They feel more like a piece of art work then they do just a simple icon and glass adds some elegance.  I can’t predict the next trend, but if I had to guess, I would think it would be a hybrid between the MSN style of icons and the current Vista style, giving a little less importance to the icon, and more importance to the UI.

Frank:          Hmmm, the glass factor.  Yeah, this is all the rage and trend lately, but I think we’ll see some evolution in the coming years.  The glass thing is just a little too shiny and a little too frosty in places and I think you will start seeing that get toned down a bit.  The big effect there is transparency.  Like anything else though, too much is a bad thing.  I would totally tell you what I think the next trend in icons will be, but I’d rather keep that a secret and let you see it when we release it.

Q7. What is the biggest mistake a developer or designer can do in choosing an Icon for their applications? 

Brittnie:         In our world they could use the icon incorrectly, which then breaks the users understanding of what that icon does.  Windows, Windows Live, & IE all use the same library of icons so using them correctly helps the user to immediately identify what action is going to be taken when the icon is clicked, thus enhances the User experience.   The second thing they could do wrong is size an icon up from a smaller file, pixilation then occurs in the image.

Frank:          Totally in sync with Brittnie here.  An example of using an icon incorrectly would be choosing an icon that has traditionally had a different metaphor to mean something else in your UI.  This is BAD…REAL BAD.  It’s hard to retrain people to think about something in a different way and if your use of an icon gives the user a result other than the intended result because of a bad metaphor, well then you just hosed the usability of your product.  Metaphors in general can be a bad thing and should be avoided unless it is universally known.  You have to think about localization here and what the icon could potentially mean in another culture.

Q8. What advice would you give to the design market around producing a set of icons? given that most software vendors require a themed approach? 

Brittnie:         I guess the advice I would give would depend on what style they were trying to create an icon in.  If they were trying to create an icon in the Vista style I would say the most important thing to do is work closely with the library owner so they can understand what is already built, and how to visual represent something that needs to map into our icons, and to make sure the style guide is being followed.

Frank:          For designers outside of MSFT, the #1 thing I’d say they need to know their target audience.  Sounds stupid, but if none of your users are running Vista (which we all know they should right? J), then you shouldn’t be using the Aero theme for your icons or your UI will look like butt.  This is where proper research comes into play.  Know the limitations of your product.  Think about WHERE the icon will be used, platform, form factor, etc. (mobile device or a huge honkin projection screen in a NOC center).  Think about the environment in which your icon will be seen (potential lighting situations, types of display technology).  We all like to think we are designing icons that will be used on a Windows box in a home or office environment, but the reality is that your icon could end up in a place you never expected it to.  You have to think about a lot of factors when choosing the right design.  Think ahead, anticipate the unexpected and ask a lot of questions.

Q9. Icon’s typically have two states associated to them (eg: recycle bin, full/empty). Yet some (Audim on OSX for example) are now using animation to represent status change, what advice would you give around keeping that from getting out of hand? 

Brittnie: I would say each situation needs to be addressed case by case.  I avoid using animation or multiple states of icons unless there is a status to an icon that needs to be represented for its functionality.    I think the cost of making second/third icons and the additional cost of animating those icons will keep us from doing it too often.  That is usually where I push back from when an icon of this type is requested.

Frank:          I would actually argue that it ISN’T typical for an icon to have 2 states.  There are definitely times when this is the case however.  Status change and animation are two separate things.  You can have one without the other.  I think that having status change is an effective way of providing feedback to a user for certain things.  Animation is where things would tend to get out of control if not done correctly.  In the case of an object that is synchronizing something or transferring data, I can see the value of adding animation to an icon because it’s representing that there is a task in progress. It’s live feedback letting the user know something is happening. But gratuitous animation for the sake of animation is where you start getting into the cheese factor.  How long did those flaming .gifs and websites with music last back in 1995?  Yeah…

Q10. Why can’t we have a universal icon format that fits all platforms, devices and other digital surfaces. 

Brittnie: I think it would be AMAZING to have all platforms support then same file type/format, but I don’t know if this would ever be possible considering the constraints on the web that don’t exist in the OS.

Frank:                   I also think that the idea of a universal icon format would be ideal.  Unfortunately we live in a world where everyone wants to be king and nobody wants to concede to the other player.  You can say that about almost any format on the market.  Blue Ray vs. HD DVD /  PDF vs. XPS /  RAW vs. DNG, the list goes on.  Then you have the issue of maintaining backwards compatibility and re-engineering existing apps to take advantage of a universal format.  Then who owns it?  I think people are just set in their ways and on the grand scheme of things, a universal icon format isn’t at the top of the list of priorities for most folks.  It’s a shame really, but I guess that’s life in the 21^st century.

Conclusion

I think that there is going to be a very lucrative market ahead for Icon Designers, especially as RIA begins to heat up more and more as technology gets advanced. Themed Icon designers, and quality ones will be in high demand along side UI designers – in fact – one could argue that a good UI designer for applications should come in armed with Icon Design capabilities. As you can then complete the entire themed experience in a way that others may not be able to.

XAML, is also something in which I think there is could have stronger potential. The ability to transfer icons back and forth amongst designer & developer workflow will also work towards reduction of having to design icon’s for different scales (16,32,48 etc).

This is also something which probably doesn’t get discussed enough, in that Microsoft Community can offer a lot of maturity in this space going forward. We have exceptionally talented, intelligent and extremely focused User Experience folks on our ethos. I expect as time passes we will continue to see some of this thought leadership and maturity help shape the Microsoft version of “Next Web”.

Also we have  icon design guideline(s) which others may find useful:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511280.aspx

Related Posts:

• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Silverlight and the reality of Accessibility