Category Archives: Industry

For the decision makers

I suspect Windows Phone team are chasing the wrong metrics.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
3

I’ve had an interesting and insightful conversation with Steve Sinofsky the past 24hrs that has got me thinking about the concept of how we measure success. Firstly, I know its freaking me out how much I am learning from the one person that I honestly thought was the single point of failure at Microsoft – but – I was wrong! as I suspect he had more to offer than Microsoft was willing to absorb that or he was too busy trying to steer whatever ship(s) he was steering to discuss.

To the subject at hand.

When I think about Mobility and how we measure the success and failures, I automatically break open my OneNote file on where the numbers are currently at when it comes to Windows Phone 8, iPhone, Android etc. The first thing I often do is review what the market share looks like and then probably grow agitated at how slowly Windows Phone is moving (yay 50% growth, but they need 300% to break into the 3rd place category).

The problem with just tracking market share is the data has no soul, which leads me into the points I’ve been having with Sinofsky around how data is just a signal of behavior but it doesn’t tell you the entire picture accurately.

How do I mean accurately?

If you look at iPhone today you will no doubt see, it has a huge amount of the market share pie, but in all honesty, that doesn’t tell you much in the way of actual usage or replenishment rates. All it tells us is right now on planet earth there is just a very large amount of iPhones floating about the place and typically, many new customers are switching on iPhones for the first time each day we breathe oxygen.

If you however look to your left or right and ask your peers how often do they buy iPhones they may typically come back with an answer that resembles “one to two years” In that they aren’t the ones likely to retain parity with Apple’s release cycles anymore?

What happens to their existing phones when they fade it out? Is it relegated to the grandparents? Given to the kids as a gaming device? Sold on ebay?

That for me is the metric I want to know the most about, how many new phones are people adopting and lastly how long does it take between phone adoptions. Then if you can layer in operating system, form factor (sizes) and latency between adoptions that would probably give early signs of where movement between adoptions is happening.

Having that data set will also tell us all an open transparent story around how each mobile phone corporation in the race for success is able to sustain their adoption & life cycle. It also would give teams like the Windows Phone team a smarter metric to go after as if a typical iPhone customer today is taking 1-2 years before they migrate to a new phone or upgrade that in itself is the period in which you would need to strike aggressively.

How to navigate these waters with the right data is the key and focusing in on who has the biggest slice of the pie tells us an end total of who was smart enough to figure out the overall collective metrics. It doesn’t tell us a story around who’s strategy was successful and where?

For instance, which phone size right now is the bliss point in size? Which phone color is the best? Which phone feature seems to excite the most? And so on.

These are data points and many more like them that are quite hard to mine for given most companies will hide that as much as possible to save embarrassment or alert competitors of success. Which is fine it just sadly feeds the beast around “% marketshare = success” rhetoric.

You can boost your percentage if you just give phones away for free in China/India as sure, it will hurt your revenue model(s) but it would boost your confidence in the market level(s) and probably lighten the burden on your marketing budget as well. Clearly though that is a terrible strategy given it is going after the % and can’t sustain itself long term.

I guess my end point and the lesson of the week is basically, what the definition of success here is in our industry? Is it to have 40%+ market share for a particular brand which in turn influences our decision(s) to buy or are we being shaped / groomed into buying these devices because suppliers are assuming that having market share means an easier sale? Downside is we are probably buying a form factor or device because of noisy influence vs. the right fit.

Point and case – I bought the Nokia 920 because everyone I knew said it was the best of breed at the time for Windows Phone 8. I automatically forgave its size because I wanted to hear that story around it being the best. It took me a day before I developed buyer’s remorse solely on the size of the device as sure it had qualities that I liked about the phone but I really didn’t need to go above my iphone size?

I went into that purchase with two sets of bias and I allowed the bogus data to shape an outcome that I ultimately did not want. Stupid but interesting how I was influenced.

 

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Lost: One Microsoft PR Genie, last seen in the bottle.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
2

It turns out yet again Microsoft and Waggener Edstrom (the folks they outsource their PR to) seem to have this ongoing disconnect between reality and the Redmond Zip code. In that when a journalist on sites like “The Verge” or other(s) taps you on the shoulder for comment(s) in around what the *ACTUAL* strategy is going to be for Windows Phone 8 and future upgrades / updates.

Take the freaking call.  :oops:

In ignoring this, they in turn let the message around what this all actually means fall into the hands of the horde, which in turn means a lot of assumptions, assertions and most importantly anti-Windows Phone fuel for the rumor mill fire(s).

First reading you will take a pass at this being a case of Microsoft looking to rub their greedy hands together and go for the ye olde replenishment model. If you shift all your energy & focus onto a new release for new phones, only you can replenish your profit margins with the existing user base – as that is exactly what Apple does. After careful consideration however and you continue to read on in this saga you may stumble upon a link or two that points you to the real story in around the upgrade future(s) here, in that Microsoft will promise to give you a 8.x update.

“..Distribution of the updates may be controlled by the mobile operator or the phone manufacturer from which you purchased your phone. Update availability will also vary by country, region, and hardware capabilities…”

I could sit here and go all Troll/FUD on that last comment but in reality its like kicking that sick puppy again. I will simply say this; the messaging for this got lost yet again and now Microsoft have to spend cycles trying to put this genie back in the bottle. The only real way they can do this is by giving concrete assurances & specifics in around what 8.x vs 9.x will look like, specifically what does this whole Windows “Blue” strategy likely to become?

They will not do that, as that would be as if again someone in Microsoft + Wagged were actually taking a proactive stance on Public Relation(s) – Probably reading their PRIME scores upside down still.

To quote Tom on my facebook thread:

“..Microsoft used to control the messaging of updates a lot better, putting the blame on carriers. Carriers didn’t like this, so Microsoft removed the tables they used to supply. Some phones in the US don’t even have Tango right now, let alone 7.8. Have Microsoft committed to supplying 7.8 for every existing device? No. They’ve remained silent consistently about 7.8 and even pushed versions with buggy live tiles without a PR strategy. This support document with life cycle information has never been published before, and yet Microsoft has not managed the message well once again. It leaves people waiting for Tango or 7.8 concerned they will be left in the dark once again. Don’t defend it, ask for change…”

Simply put, this isn’t a story about Windows Phone upgrade good vs bad its more about how the hell does a company like Microsoft constantly forget to sit down and write a PR Strategy that actually makes sense. If you know you are about to launch a phone, then start campaigning now and furthermore do something about the release in a more visible / visual way that covers off your talking points of concern.

The fact Microsoft are constantly trying to figure out a way to pander to the carriers in order to push more units is probably a strong indicator as to why Surface Pro has failed to go outside handful of zip codes as they still haven’t figured out what “logistics” and “partnerships” really look like.

Apple is also being constantly used as baseline for success/failures for Microsoft in that all too often I see “but Apple do…” stop right there, Apple firstly have a strong history of success not simply because they had first move advantage on a touch-enabled phone but they have a very tightly controlled release strategy. When Apple sit down and release a product post, its actual design/development they focus in on the important areas such as:

  • “How do I get this phone to some kid in outback Australia and New York at the same time?”
  • “How do I control the entire PR noise around this launch so everyone takes queues from me not bloggers”
  • “How do I convince consumers to move to the next phone without them realizing I’m replenishing my market”.

PhoneHyper

Tim Cook from Apple probably got the succession from Steve Jobs probably (no idea) because he was brilliant at logistics & retail, in that he can get the job done around what it takes to release (even when Apples at its worst it still hits a better stride than Microsoft lately).

Before one compares Microsoft to Apple, take stock in the fact that Microsoft’s failures are not technical or by its design faults. It’s actual failures always constantly orbit in its ability to broadcast its message and make good on delivery. In reality its comparing Apples to Lemons (hah!)

This is whole upgrade fiasco is yet again filed under “How not to do Product Management & Release”.

 

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Microsoft officially supports Flash’s future over Silverlights past.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
9

In late 2008, I remember being in a strategy meeting to discuss how the ubiquity problem for Silverlight could be energized more. In that meeting we were throwing ideas around how to get Silverlight into various “forced” updates in order to combat Adobe Flash’s “98%” metric which at the time was the biggest threat to Microsoft’s web-app future(s). It was during this meeting we discussed the banning of Adobe Flash on all Microsoft owned websites (which would later take into effect via an executive order to ban Adobe Flash on all sites hosted on Microsoft.com)

Today, Microsoft is shipping Adobe Flash as part of the IE10 browser to help close the loop on the Microsoft Surface “it just works” principle (i.e. play video online etc.). However, they have not shipped Microsoft Silverlight as well, as that would probably send a mixed signal to the market.

Mixed signals like today where each developer is sitting at their cubicle wondering what exactly is Silverlight used for still and is there a future in developing application(s) for it? Despite the 20yr time support pledge from Microsoft whilst alongside the reality that the ratio of adoption from WinForms,WPF and Silverlight still outnumber Windows 8 development.

The reality is the moment Silverlight is put into IE10 and on Surface Pro; automatically developers will likely ignore / bypass the new set of Windows 8 start screen (appstore) and instead continue to develop their applications in a way that works as it would whether you had Windows 8 or Windows 7. By not adding Silverlight to the IE10 install simply places a layer of friction to this workflow and in turn probably encourages these developers to either bite down hard on the Windows 8 *ONLY* application developer workflow and/or retreat back to WPF/WinForms for the same level of development.

Failing that, they will obviously then decide to go for the “it works on all” pipedream known as HTML5/JS and use that as their development platform of choice. In doing this not only did they just cut Microsoft out of the Microsoft UX Platform adoption cycle but they may even instead opt for an alternative to their server-side delivery (doubtful but more and more folks are trying out server-side solutions like node.js).

In all directions you look at this, bottom line is the mixed signal they may refer to is filled with just utter chaos that orbits around which framework you wish to choose and how you wish to navigate all the prickly parts to the Microsoft current “broken promise” strategies on display.

In my opinion, Microsoft should continue to support Silverlight but in a way that goes beyond their comfort levels + limited imagination. Having Silverlight act as a plugin for the “old” would enable developers to bridge the gap between Windows XP, 7 and Windows8 as there is absolutely no reason why you couldn’t push out Silverlight 6 as being the XAML Runtime you find today s Windows 8.

Yes it would mean Silverlight 5 apps won’t work in Silverlight 6 but also allowing the two runtimes to be co-installed isn’t a hard thing to achieve (we even talked & spec’d this out in the early days to help with parity in runtime changes for future versions, that and removing the need to restart the browser after you installed given we used 2x process GUID instead of 1x).

By keeping Silverlight runtime in this fashion you allow developers to continue to build muscle where needed in the XAML/C# domain therefore ensuring you have continuation in the ranks around development on Microsoft platform(s).

The pipedream of simply saying to all “stop doing managed code and go for broke on HTML5/JS via our custom built solution” is just that. If you were saying to developers to opt out of the C#/XAML development story and into the HTML/JS then why would I continue to take your beatings Microsoft? Instead, if I do decide to go down this path I will look to keep it 100% neutral.

That is to say to any Microsoft staffer – YOUR AUDIENCE WILL ADOPT MAC/LINUX AND WEAR “I HATE M$ T-SHIRTS”

If you’ve ever spent any time inside Microsoft you will come to know one simple thing, Microsoft internally are fierce competitors and you will constantly hear about Apple, Google & Oracle’s movements. Specifically what is being done to combat them and how “unfair” these companies are playing the game (hell look at the Twitter feed of most staffers and its obvious thing to see)?

Never go full retard.

Bottom line is that out of all the bone head tactics I have witness Microsoft perform in the last two years this by far is the biggest and stupidest tactics by far.

Good news is your XAML/C# skills are transferrable right?…anyone?….its just a namespace change guys…come back..guys….

 

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Microsoft Surface Retail strategy in Australia is broken.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
3

If you walk into a retail store such as Harvey Norman, Dick Smith or JB HIFI in Australia with the sole intent on buying a Microsoft Surface then you will be probably shocked to learn that it is likely to be buried amongst the “laptop meets tablet” mutations.

Photo 7-03-13 12 58 18 PM

The Surface Tablet is hidden amongst an array of competing brands that are usually higher in price whilst being presented as a “laptop” in its initial resting “display” setting. Is there an attempt to highlight its form factor? No and more to the point there is absolutely no attempt to profile the branding of “Microsoft Surface” other than a strange font, which is 10%, compared to the price tag that is clearly the most important focal point.

To me the entire Microsoft Surface marketing campaign in Australia seems to be a broken situation whereby it appears Microsoft Australia are clearly metric / goaled around “impressions” and less about “conversions”. I say that as if the two metrics were linked then getting people into the “stores” would be 30% of the battle as once they are in, soliciting the potential consumers into a purchase would be where the real energy needed to be spent.

Photo 7-03-13 12 58 24 PM

Today, in these same stores if you were to walk in and buy an Apple product you would immediately notice that they are separated from the horde of random brands but all accessories that are officially owned by Apple’s brand machine are also within reach. That is to say they are clearly spending a small sum of their retail channel delivery budget(s) on ensuring that resellers such as these brands are retaining the brand(s) needs (Meyer’s in Australia also acts as a conduit to Apple’s branding).

However, why should Microsoft spend on securing the Microsoft Surface segregation?

Microsoft should and needs to put pressure on retail chains like this to have Microsoft Surface separated from the horde for the following reasons.

  • Price pressure. Clearly, the other brands are opting for the Microsoft Surface Pro approach to tablet & Windows 8 bundling with a high “laptop-centric” price tag attached. That’s fine but in reality if Microsoft wants to invoke change in the OEM channels around price and industrial design then having the beacon of example (Surface) separated ensures that these guys have to compete harder to win hearts/minds more. If Microsoft can put pressure on price models with a “lead by example” model, they can in turn regain some much lost control over this entire cluster f***k of tablet/laptop sales pipeline.
  • Differentiation. Right now, the whole Surface RT in Australia is all you can buy so there is minimal confusion around what the brand “Microsoft Surface” represents. It is only after you introduce Microsoft Surface Pro into the mix that the confusion will start to fester, especially when retail chains like the one mentioned seemed to be preoccupied with price. Having a clear definitive marquee / in-store controlled visualizations of the matrix would help clear up potential buyer’s remorse going forward.Furthermore it would again encourage put pressure on other OEM providers to consider the RT route but I highly doubt that will occur given the current failings of RT today (perception and execution wise).

In Summary, the question in the room still remains unanswered, why did Microsoft enter the tablet space as a hardware provider & not just software. I have read and heard multiple accounts as to why, to which me distills down into simply the “lead by example” formula.

If Microsoft wishes to lead by example then they need to in my opinion work harder to continue to put pressure on hardware brands like Dell, HP, ASUS, and Samsung etc. in a way that forces the consumer to start to consider an actual comparison between the brands and Microsoft’s “best of breed”.

In doing this they would also start to build some muscle & discipline in helping hardware companies focus more on the industrial design of the said device(s) as opposed to just re-using patterns they have formed whilst making Laptops (i.e. look at Android’s screen resolution issues to date and avoid that from spilling over into Windows).

Simply put, I think the overall marketing / delivery service that’s in play today puts strong indicators around the fact that not only is Microsoft lacking hardware leadership they are really living and likely to die by their previous Zune strategies (Good idea, just badly executed).

 

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Dont be a clone, be different.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
12

It’s been roughly a week or so now since I got my Windows Phone 8 iPhone clone – I mean, Nokia Lumia 920 (it was a joke, relax).

The phone itself is quite large, and that for me isn’t an issue except I find my thumbs don’t get as much surface coverage on either side of the phone. The battery life on the phone is nice but the overall user experience within the phone drives me mad.

The camera for instance was annoying because when it came to take a photo I had forgotten I had the setting on close up, so when I took my shot of choice it came out blurry.  It took a while for me to remember that the setting was changed as there was no visual indication that the said phone was in a particular setting – as if having an icon on display all the time was a failure Nokia wouldn’t tolerate (you failed me Nokia)

There are a lot of other settings that also drive me crazy and I could list the postives & negatives all day (Still trying to sort through my emotions on whether this phone will last or go).  However, the one and most crucial thing of all that I dislike about the experience is the App Store clones.

What I mean to say is, despite the various ups & downs that come with having the actual phone – which I can live with – the one piece to this equation is just how immature and terrible the applications that you have on offer are within the Microsoft store. It’s like all the other kids (iPhone/Android) are riding dirtbikes but your parents give you  a new bmx bike (Windows Phone 8) with a fake muffler attached.

I’m struggling even as I type this to come up with some examples of great apps, the ones you cannot live without. The only application that I find actually useful and fairly well designed was Skype. I found Twitter apps to be half-done, broken, prone to “an error has occurred” status messages or the worse offender of all – the official Facebook app (which feels like it was written by a first year programming intern). These are really two applications that a smartphone today must own in terms of unique experience, as these i’d argue are probably the most frequently used outside email (would it kill the design team to use “bold” font to indicate unread emails btw?? and text messaging + threads… really.. threads? what is this a texting forum?).

There is much I’d tolerate about owning this phone but looking at my iPhone apps that are sitting idle and then staring at my Windows Phone I can’t but help develop buyer’s remorse at the moment. I miss my instagram, twitter, flipboard, facebook (yes even iPhone Facebook app), games,  XBMC remote, ANZ Bank and the list goes on and on.

There are really only two applications within the Windows Phone 8 market place that stand out for me – Qantas and ZARA.  The Qantas app is still a bit flat but it looks different enough to give it a pass whilst the ZARA app (Fashion) looks quality elegant / tastefully done – even though I have zero use for it but can appreciate its design.

My underlying point is this. I want to keep using this phone, I want to get off the iPhone crack and try new things but if you keep rinse & repeating the same stupid template driven applications whilst touting “I’m being authentically digital” then you in turn are killing yourselves more than my experience.

If this phone has a chance of success it’s going to come down to development teams engaging a designer and throwing out the Windows Phone 8 “Design Guidelines” by Microsoft.

Microsoft have not a consistent coherent clue as to what good design is and have consistently shown they themselves can’t even lock onto the concept of what good design is. They rely heavily on design agencies, contractors and partners to do the majority of the actual design for solutions they “make”.

There are currently 90+ designers on the Windows Phone 8 “team” and I ask a simple question – What the f**K are you all doing? You’re not helping the community & marketplace that’s for sure.

So please hire a designer today.

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Microsoft needs reimagine Live to be alive.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
5

Today, I thought I might spend a lunch time getting my brain wrapped around the idea of how Single Sign-On works within the Microsoft Live ethos.

Assuming you manage to get past the quagmire of deprecated documentation, installation, association loop holes & hurdles one can finally settle on getting a basic Authentication happening.

Once that was complete It’s now back to reality where you have to also decode the Privacy Guidelines / Settings used for applications that make use of this great ball of angry code.

Throughout this journey one thing has stood out the most. It’s as if someone within the Live “Team” (If there are any people left to call it a team) have not only given up but raised the standards of bad development & audience seeding to all time new high.

It’s easy to just throw Live under a bus, many have been doing it for years but it doesn’t really solely fall in their lap either. I look at you the Windows 8 team, as you clearly aren’t giving this entire scenario much attention – especially when you have devoted so much energy & time convincing us to use our “Live Id” to sign into Windows.

As far back as 2007, Live Id’s were an important metric in the Microsoft camp where the company would even pay large Enterprises kick backs to use Live ID instead of a Gmail/Google account (early stages of User Id meets cloud land grabs). It’s always in many ways held an area of importancebut despite all the fluff around “Windows reimagined” the basic(s) are still a tyre fire and clearly not as well thought out.

For instance, you log into Facebook and you agree to allow some random application access to your details. If later on you wish to retract that offer (not that it would matter) you’d in turn go to a specific area of the site and remove. The same goes with Apple, Twitter and countless other brands to name.

Not Microsoft.

Nope, you say yes to the Application but in from there on out you have to either ask someone or remember that buried deep within your Live ID account management online (via the web only) there’s an obscure link which lets you manage your privacy settings).

As a developer if you want to make use of the Live Id well, you have to abide by the guidelines within Microsoft and ensure you firstly build a “Settings” menu into your application, which then has preferably Permissions, About, Privacy & Account options (I did mention this was opt-in). That to me is a lot of extra work that is in reality not required per app, it should be something in which each developer has no control over. It’s not as if the developer is telling the AppStore what kind of access he/she needs from the said app upfront (oh wait..it is…via scopes).

Instead Microsoft plays the lazy route, makes the developer put together a URL of some sort which outlines their privacy statement(s) out loud (which is really just mother hood statements like “I won’t be evil with your data – said the Nigerian Prince”.

Sadly, this is a huge amount of unnecessary heavy lifiting to get something done which is basic and it’s likely due to yet again Microsoft internal culture spilling over into the various developer relation(s) that’s NOT going on right now. What I mean to say is Live has pretty much lost the bulk of its energy via staff leaving, fired, retrenched or simply given up.

If Live is a toxic cloud of developer stupidity then why would you as a developer target Windows 8 Application Development given the front door is broken.

Now to figure out how I can reset the “Allow this app to access your” permissions – despite removing the said App from my “online profile” it still seems to work. Yes….it’s potentially a bug in their privacy (Oh I wish I could say I made this up).

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The Days of Microsoft Lives.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
16

I was talking to a friend last night about the whole Microsoft fall out. It was a good laugh and the more we discussed it the more a script inside my imagination began to form. I always find myself thinking of Steve Ballmer as this bad CEO played by John Cleese who at times appears coherent and then out of nowhere the mad Ballmer shines through. The below is how I foresee the whole Sinfosky/Balmer fall out and it also touches on the absolute amazing incompetence Microsoft is currently showing around launching two flagship products – Surface & Windows Phone 8.

In all honesty if you had of asked me to come up with a script like below to sabotage the launch of these two products, even on my best day I’d not match the level of brilliance if f**king up the launch that they have done to date (hats off to that amount of failure, that requires skill).

Probably not a good idea to fire most of your Product Management team(s) prior to release though (300 or so got the boot).

 

TITLE:  The Days of Microsoft Lives

The door opens and in walks the CEO, he looks determined but still has the look of the 1980’s car salesman buried deep within.

CEO:
Alright, listen up as we have a lot to get through today. Thank you all for all the hard work you have put into the work so far, it’s been super duper exciting and I want to thank you all for the brilliance you’ve shown. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are going to be the baseline markers for our future successes.

Sinofsky:
If I may sir…

CEO:
Grab some pine Sinofsky and shut your hole.

An awkward chill flows around the room as Sinofsky slowly sits down with an expression of both embarrassment and murderous intent leveled at the CEO.

CEO:
Ok.. firstly given the huge pressure we have at making this release the biggest the will likely produce for some time I need to have our entire marketing and sales pipelines at full steam. With that, I need your resignation Sinofsky.

Sinofsky:
What the f….

CEO:
Basically not a lot of people like you and I asked you nicely awhile back to launch Windows 7 on the tablet and you wanted to play games. Well, you played and lost so with that, resign and clear your shit out by this afternoon. I also need to use you as a way to soften the upcoming failures with the board, so you may hear some things about what you did in the future, best you go along with whatever is said.

CEO:
Now, I need to split his role into two as I never want to see an executive with that much power again. It frightened me a little.

CEO points at two executives either side of Sinofsky.

CEO:
You two, yes you two you’re both in charge but in reality you’re not in charge. Speaking of executives with power, has anyone seen Scott Guthrie? … no?… Good, keep it that way as if he climbs out of that Azure hole we buried him in I want to be the first to know.

Sinofsky:
Actually, he’s doing an amazing job with it and is likely to turn that turd around into a success. I mean it has come a long way since he took over the re…

CEO:
Seriously you’re still here? … Is not there a box you should be filling…

Sinofsky:
Shouldn’t we first figure out what we are going to say to the press? I mean my leaving will create an issue for both the PR for Windows and potentially the stock price.

CEO:
You’re not that noticeable. Get packing, I will talk to the press later about it.

Sinofsky slowly gets up out of his chair and begins to walk out. Giving the CEO a glance as if to say “..this will be your undoing…”

CEO:
Next, I want marketing to blitz the entire globe with ads about Surface and Windows 8, if you can also not separate the two products I think it will help cement that Windows 8 is a tablet and OS without saying that out loud.

Marketing Guy:
Sir, wouldn’t it be prudent to ensure we keep the two separate and we also probably should discuss with supply & logistics about how we are going to supply the demand?

CEO:
What’s your name? ..Does not matter…You are fired.

Marketing Guy leaves the room crying chanting, “I knew I should keep my ideas to myself, damn it, my wife is going to kill me…” as he sobs running into a glass door.

CEO:
Market it  my way people. Next I want to also limit our purchases of Surface online and via our retail stores. It is important we look like Apple In order to beat them at their own game.

RetailStoreExec:
About that.. You know all of Apple stores are designed to reflect the environment they are housed within. In that, they really do go out of their way to work with the existing and surrounding architecture. We should really consider doing that as well as just copy their internal furn…

CEO:
You want to join the others that got fired this morning? Pick one style and keep repeating them we don’t have time to be design focused.. more stores.. supply.. make it happen.

CEO:
Can someone get in contact with Stephen Elop over at Nokia. It is time to move our timetable forward a little on Project Nokia Acquire. I want him to hold off on the Lumia 920 outside the US, if he can shorten stock orders worldwide that will surely lower the share price further for our takeover bid. Also, tell him that we got rid of Sinofsky, as he will be happy with that given Sinofsky used to always undermine him in during his Office days (builds favor you see).

OEMPartnerCVP:
Won’t that also hurt our Windows Phone 8 adoption chances? As wont most hold out for that phone given it seems to be the one with the most features?

CEO:
Yes. You are right but here is the thing: that was Sinofsky’s fault. If we can also bring moral and hearts/minds lower over the Christmas quarter I can then turn the ship around post Sinofsky leaving and make it look like I am a competent CEO and saved the day.

OEMPartnerCVP:
Sir, you realized you said that out loud right. In that, it was not your internal voice.

CEO:
I need your resignation by the end of the day. You know too much.

The camera begins to drift away from the scene with the CEO’s voice getting harder to hear but one last order is heard before the Microsoft logo fades into view.

CEO:
Has anyone seen Guthrie? .. Make sure he his kept on the back bench do not let him out of that Azure cage. He has to many people adoring his abilities and he reminds me too much of Bill… Someone call Bill and make sure he knows that he cannot fire me or I show those Polaroid’s with him & two dead hookers.

Wait…

You are all fired, you know too much now.

 

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Jakob Nielsen is not your Windows 8 Guru heres why.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
41

I can’t believe i’m about to defend Microsoft Design outloud like this. It’s not something I would normally do, however when it comes to the Jakob Nielsen Windows 8 review I just can’t stand to let it slide. Personally I think that entire company is still stuck in the past and has consistently failed to navigate change with a degree of accurate prediction since they declared Flash a fail (Oct 2000) (which translates to in principle to JavaScript based websites a fail).

Furthermore I think they rely on the idea that the end users are all collective virgin users who have never had to navigate or use bad UI in todays software environments. The fact that we as a human race can navigate even dumb solutions such as Sharepoint, Lotus Notes, SAP and a whole host of other really badly design UI indicates that we aren’t as dumb as useit.com would have us believe. Furthermore there is a huge generational change underway whereby the concept of “experienced windows users” would be fair to say my 8yr old son fits that category.

The clue is in the audience sampled as if you get that wrong the rest of the responses are just opinions based around a skewed bias (bad baseline to draw from on their part).  Here is my notes from an internal email I sent around when I was asked “what do you think of the article” from my co-workers.

NOTE: This is a raw / unedited email-centric dump. There is no grammar/ spelling so if you piss and moan about in the comments you really should step away from the computer more.

In case you suffer from TLDR – here’s the short extranous cognitive load friendly version

What the hell was that

 

My remarks:

  •  Novice and Power Users.  “Invited 12 experienced Windows users” is a weak / broad sweeping remark to make that XYZ demographic doesn’t like N-Product. Keep in mind I’m a tough critic of Windows 8’s design, but even I can concede it’s still usable whether the incentive is to use though is entirely different matter (Cognitive Dissonance measures Behavior vs. Incentive).  I would have taken him more serious if he had of used a variety of audience(s) for this (OSX users, Seniors, GenY, IT Professionals, Sales force etc) .. everyone’s experienced In Windows is my point.


Cognitive Overhead.

  • Prospective Memory – I think he’s building up to “learn where to go” and associating it as a bad thing. The concept of a desktop works in favor of prospective memory, meaning “I’ll put x here so I can come back to it later” works in the same fashion as the start overlay. Its not ideal, but to declare this a cognitive overload is an over-reach given over time (behavior) users will settle on a rhythm that suites them. If I press START and start typing my context will adjust to the text I’m typing and so on.
  •  Dual Environments -  The two environments in which he speaks of are WinRT and WinRT Pro, now the clue is in the word “Pro” firstly and it has to do with legacy support than actual user experience (context is annoying when you leave it out huh?). Tablet users won’t interact with the said duality he’s nominated so it kind of is a weak point to rest on and those that opt for the Surface Pro edition are doing so more as a finger in both pies approach to the problem at hand. If I pitched the problem that needed to be solved in that I need the user(s) to have both Windows Now and Windows vNext it shifts the results differently as if I said I need the users to solely focus on vNext only … Again, It feels more about airbrushing the facts without context (Ironic given the guy’s a usability “guru” and how context is important in ux as content).
  • Added Memory.  I see this a lot and I wonder if UX Practitioners suffer from this concept that we all suffer from sudden memory loss at any given point. I understand interruption etc plays into this but in reality we don’t multi task and phones today for example don’t have this issue – if anything given the complexity between switching from apps via navigation routines (ie iPhone double hitting the rectangle and using a slider style switch). I am baffled as to what moment of brilliance the author assumes he/she is uncovering here – I’m kind of lost between whether I dislike his point or the actual website itself’s design.

Multi Window

  •  Responsive & Adaptive Design– I think the author again (they really should sit down and study some basic design principles to articulate the points) probably wanted to say that the design of the solution isn’t responsive and/or adaptive depending on screen real estate. The said applications again don’t make full use of the screen(s) they are being deployed or used upon. I concede that this could be an issue for usage of LOB solutions but at the same time I also reject it. Having window support in today’s UI world is an absolute engineering challenge at the best of times and furthermore buy having to adhere and cater to this we in turn limit our future potential by sticking to the ye olde side by side window usage. As it now begs the question, why are two applications side by side if they are related?  If we have a forcing function which puts emphasis on a single screen visualization would this not cut down on fragmented software delivery? What if the snap screen concept could be more broader in its execution where you allow users to have more than one window at a time but the designs themselves can be responsive to the state in which they are housed? This works better imho than just given floating cascade windows with dynamic border resize + maximize + minimize. It fixes and creates an interesting solution to much bigger problem.Again, the author is kind of saying “it’s changed, I don’t like it”. I didn’t like the day I gave up a tactical keyboard for a touch screen, but I got over it and can type just as fast now. Humans evolve.

Discoverability

  •  Flat styles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been driving along the highway and seen the turn arrow being flat and thought to myself “I wish that had a sense of depth, as that would give me contrast to make an informative decision”. The whole idea that we need depth in order to associate action is a kind of “drawing from a long bow”. If you’re a virgin user and never seen something for the first time, yes, you have that moment of initial “wtf” but you explore, because now it’s a puzzle and you have an incentive to figure it out.  Take into account marketing and real-world surroundings it’s fair to assume that the learnability of a solid icon is considered both touchable and untouchable.  You will discover this fairly easily but the learnability is probably shallow but discoverability isn’t – Key differentiation there.  I don’t agree with Metro’s content over chrome metaphor and in the visual he provided it’s an easy fight to pick (grouping is all wrong) but the failures here are easily misleading given he left out the constancy of the design (in that it’s not isolated to one area, it’s throughout and again, surprisingly we all seem to navigate over time without issue – behavior vs incentive again).
  •  Symbology. Probably the only thing I would agree here is that there is way too much of a strong reliance on symbology to convey the context of what the said solution does. There’s no personality attached to apps and functions, meaning I think there still needs to be a balance between core operating and in-app functions and said Applications (one thing iPhone does well as the apps entry icons are able to retain a differentiation whereas Win8 it doesn’t). I don’t think the author articulated this very well but I sense that’s the direction they were heading

Information Density

I won’t bother remarking too much on these areas, suffice to say it’s like I grabbed Angry Birds app, declared iPhone a fail due to lack of 3D support. Probably helps to separate third party applications from the actual said operating system. You can grade an OS based on its actual abilities or inbuilt functions, not by what the ecosystem does with them as that’s a slippery slope.

Desktop computers and horizontal control hasn’t been a failure. I don’t subscribe to the “well on websites it failed” it actually hasn’t, its more to do with screen size, frequency of use and does the UI tease the user to carry out the action. It’s not a complete failure it’s more to do with context and case by case. Now the current win8 mode relies on the horizontal scroll bar or mouse wheel to navigate between the screen and yes I think the missing element here is for the mouse to do the flicking between left/right (kinetic scrolling etc).

Live Tiles.

Agreed. Probably the one area of this article he nailed well. Yeah, the live Tiles for me is like a room full of screaming kids all asking for ice cream and one asking to go to the toilet. Pray you get the later right early.

Charms.

  • Progressive Disclosure has always been a double edged sword. On one hand you free up user from distraction by giving them a chunk of information to process act upon whilst on the other hand you’re easily forgotten and totally rely on muscle memory / learnability to be your UX crutch. I don’t think the author framed this correctly in this case by asserting that the users will “forget” the charm icons etc. I think it’s got poor amount of UX friction associated to it but the idea that Novice/Power users will be absent minded users here is really again an over reach. I find the whole persona attachment in this authors writing to be disconnected and fluctuates between a virgin user and a veteran of 15 years+ user? (settle on them and grouping here clearly needs to indicate the level of friction associated to each point).Had the user stated “I sampled a user with only 6month usage of a computer” then yes, Charms would be hazardous to one’s health. The reality is that’s a generational issue firstly (ie they are deprecating) and secondly there is such a wash of bad UI in software today that the users in general are what I’d call “defensive” in that they have been trained over and over that UI today isn’t always a case of “everything is in front of you where you need it”.  Furthermore if you take a step back in time and look at the green-screen terminals and how data entry operators would fly through the various fields etc one can see that a human and pattern recognition have remarkable abilities.

Gestures.

I’ve not used Win8 Gestures to comment. I want to take the author at his/her word but so far I’m inclined to favor Microsoft here. That being said, Microsoft and Touch have never really been that good together (even Surface Table had issues here). Suffice to say they really need to tidy up NUI in general here and its still the wild west, so in reality anything that all brands put on the table is open to this set of arguments.

Windows 8 Weak on Tablets, Terrible on PC’s.

Yeah this is where the true bias shows through and why my UX spidey senses tingled. It’s in this part you see the opinion shine through which can distill down to that they wanted Win8 to be tablet only UI and desktop to continue the Win7 as-is approach.  It shows lack of foresight for how the mobility and desktop market’s are starting to eat away into the tablet focused approach. How well we handle the ergonomics of going between a laptop to a tablet is still undecided but that’s the direction ones heading. Microsoft are trying to get out ahead of this early and if that means along the way they will fumble some of the UX by giving a duality in both old and new then so be it. In my view if you are given the problem of retaining the old while moving the user base over to the new in an aggressive manner then Microsoft may actually have a winning idea (yes I just praised Microsoft). I would however say that there Metro design style is going to come back and bite them the most and from what I can tell the Author has been cherry picking the negatives in order to build up to a point of how unusable it is. No balanced proposition here other than I don’t like Windows 8 and here’s why (hence the whole paragraph of “I don’t hate Microsoft but..” which translates to “I’m not racist, but..” …there is no “but” ..as everything you just said before it gets lost in cognitive overload (grin).

How the author then goes onto praise Ribbon Menu after spending a paragraph or two downsizing the charm bar “out of sight out of mind” makes me confused

Lastly by asserting that Win7 needs to be replaced with Windows 8 is probably the final conclusion that Microsoft marketing still sucks at its job (ie it’s not an upgrade, its an additive product) and lastly the user should stick more to the UI principles and less to OS Market analysis.

 

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The fall of Sinofsky ..where’s the gold plated AK47?

Posted on by Scott Barnes
5

Yesterday I read a tweet that Sinofsky was leaving Microsoft and my immediate thoughts were along the lines of most – oh, it is early but not unexpected.

As I read countless more news articles about the event and listen to others give their assertion as to what is happen and how it was not as bad as it looks and so on I simply come to a single conclusion.

Worst retirement party ever.

If you read Sinofsky’s parting letter mixed with Steve Ballmer’s as expected carefully polished internal email one would assume it was a parting of positivity not negativity.

The reality is you do not take a high powered executive like Sinofsky and have him resign effective immediately you setup what they did with Bill Gates – a long goodbye. You temper both your internal staff and external shareholders with a 3month transition at the very least (maybe 6 month). You want to make it feel as if it is Steve Sinofsky’s choice and he now wants to leave Microsoft and go paint in Italy or something mundane like that.
Bring a sense of calm because if you don’t, well you have his name trending in twitter and conspiracy theories that make Microsoft look like they have zero control over the PR beast.

The latter is what actually has happened, Microsoft lost control over this entire thing and that is the part that I think is the most interesting. I personally do not think this was a calm exit, from everything I know about this company this entire issue has been simmering for some time and I think it came down to a titanic power play which seemingly backfired on Steve Sinofsky.

I wonder how the whole thing played out though; I mean you had Steve Ballmer on stage at the Build keynote giving a technical demo that actually did not do any harm – which to be clear in all the years of Microsoft I have never seen before.

That sent some mixed signals early on, as to say “hmm.. Steve Sinofsky is a vain person who likes to soak up his victories, why on earth would he be sidelined at the crowning moment?”

It could very well have been a planned departure – I doubt it – but if that were to be true then first thing Microsoft Board needs to do is figure out why they are paying their various PR firms money as quite frankly this was a disaster beyond most normal marketing/PR fails the company is used to.

As a friend said once “Microsoft takes every opportunity to fail and then comes back asking for more” in this case he was correct – again.

Lastly, I went to Sweden last week and gave a presentation on decoding the Microsoft roadmap where I talk about the rise of Sinofsky and you can view it here.

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My thoughts on Typescript

Posted on by Scott Barnes
7

I have been asked quite a few times in the last 24hrs how I stand regarding TypeScript – Microsoft’s answer to solving the elephant in the HTML5 adoption room (JavaScript).

First impressions count and they were positive, I studied the marketing material, I installed the plugin and I even wrote some code – outcome yes, it works for me. The work done on this “it tastes like chicken” façade to the JavaScript issue is outstanding and I’d not think anything less of the work Anders spits out from that enormous talent sized brain of his.

I am however suspicious of this concept – time to put my Microsoft trouble maker tinfoil hat back on.

I have mentioned numerous times that there has been this divide or chasm between Windows + Internet Explorer and WPF/Silverlight – that is to say XAML/C# vs. HTML5/JS/C++. It is pretty well documented on this blog and in other parts of the web, and there is not much more to discuss on this suffice to say Typescript is yet another win for the HTML5 camp and loss for the XAML/C# camp.

This Is the part where a Microsoft evangelist or product manager for the team(s) feign innocence and give you the usual “it’s about choice” speech.  True it will be about choice; I just cannot help to think that with all that investment and work gone into C#/XAML mix that taking a few steps backward to prop up HTML5/TypeScript seems an awful waste of time and energy to date.

There is no doubt that I would personally adopt TypeScript/HTML5 when the time comes to write a HTML based solution, as to me it fits nicely with my desired development pipeline. I still think however, the entire web based development pipeline is around 3-5 years behind where XAML/C# is today (I will even throw in Adobe ActionScript/MXML into that mix as well).

My thoughts are simple

  • Ecma6 is hopefully going to crush JavaScripts skull and the abomination of JavaScript we see today will be wiped from the face of the earth hopefully never to be spoken of again (ie Typescript leads that charge from a Microsoft developer standpoint)
  • Internet Explorer is still being regarded inside Microsoft as a standalone ecosystem. I am still nervous and not excited about this thus suspicious of Typescripts charter (that fork in the road for IE vs. other browsers in the parity/ubiquity story is still coming up ahead).
  • HTML5 vs. XAML/MXML. I still roll my eyes at HTML5 mainly as when you’ve used both MXML or XAML in your day to day development then look at HTML5 one can’t but help see the HTML5 has not only gone of charter – yet again. If we are going to go full, tilt XML UI declarative then let us fold Resource Dictionaries into place instead of CSS / style tags and be done with it.
  • Typescript was fun to develop with. I almost got a little giggle at making my HTML do stuff via Typescript that I’ve grown accustomed to with Flex/WPF/Silverlight but it still felt 3 steps backwards. It reminded me of the days of DHTML when we did this kind of thing by ourselves when writing your own JavaScript framework was the cool-kids thing to do (I once – 2004 – wrote a Flash framework that read in XML as instructions on how to design UI, I also did the same for JavaScript.  Crazy eh?)
  • A few people will whine about Typescript being a big ol façade or yet another JavaScript wrapper but the difference form all the alternatives is that firstly, Microsoft wrote this one. Secondly, it comes as a plugin for Visual Studio and thirdly it has a geek-celeb behind it (Anders). Most non-Microsoft developers will give a “hand jerk” motion to those tickboxes but you do not understand the requirement most .NET shops have (which has now been ticked). Adoption will follow, remember this.
  • Typescript reminds me of the days when Adobe/Macromedia switched from ActionScript 1.o to 2.0/3.0. You felt it was a move forward and the idea isn’t new, at the same time it took a long while for existing developers to cross that chasm of adoption. Hopefully it ECMA6 wont fall into that same vortex of pain.

In Summary, Typescript will be a hit amongst the .NET kids out there, I don’t think it will go beyond that but that’s ok as that’s a few million developers out there that it will influence. I think this is still setting the ground work for future Internet Explorer development going forward and stay tuned for more of that discussion.

Why is Internet Explorer its own ecosystem?

Why is Internet Explorer its own ecosystem? Why not say “Web” .. :)

I hope this however puts a lot of pressure on the makers of browsers & tooling that JavaScript needs to be abandoned as we know it, that it needs to keep moving forward if we are truly going to reach absolute parity with plugin(s) / native experiences such as Adobe Flex, Silverlight or WPF in way that doesn’t feel like you’ve had sacrifice your first born to achieve parity.

To quote a friend who recently gave his thoughts on HTML/JS development instead of WPF/SL/Flex development

It is like getting a hand job from a crack addict. You know it is wrong, you know it is a substitute for what you really want and lastly once it happens you can never look your friends in the eye the same way again. It however got the job done.

(That was the clean version of that believe it or not).

 

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