The Likes & Dislikes of Microsoft in 2011

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Scott Barnes

The calendar increments by 1 year now and as it does I think about the last year and ponder what I liked and disliked in my sandbox that I call the Microsoft ethos

Windows Phone 7

I liked Nokias approach to branding the product; they really took what they saw and made it the focal point of what the experience for consumers should be. That is, they did what I asked at the start of the year; make the metro design your familiar face in the crowd.
I liked the WP7 Design contest; I rarely ever give an endorsement to contests as they are a desperate response to bad marketing, in this case though the designs that came back were actually tidy and immediately wanted you to explore the apps. Now to see if they make it into the appstore.
I disliked WP7 marketing from Microsoft, it was chaotic, it lacked depth and $500million in marketing spent later, I still can’t put my finger on one message that you could hang your hat on. Compare Apple iPhone / Android marketing to Wp7 and it baffles me as to what is going on in that team – I think they just carpet bomb SeaTac / LAX airports with it knowing that Microsoft Execs travel through there and hope that’s enough to convince them they are “everywhere” – reality is, Bus shelter ads aren’t putting the wp7 logo on the bottom of their “get our apps” signage – which is a fail.
I disliked the WP7 app store pricing model, fact is they are charging the same rates as iPhone devs or there about and in the end you have a marketshare that Samsung is even beating. I agree with Laurence Moroney – Reality check for two please and can we have that to go.
I disliked the compete b.s that came from Staffers at Microsoft around WP7, fight the internal metrics and rise above the whole “heh did you see that, Apple just copied us!” mentality. Its very weak and if you are to beat the competition then you need to stop watching their every move hoping and praying for a weakness to occur. If Apple copy you, great, internalize that victory but keep it internal and instead move the bar higher as the best way for people to absorb that reality is when someone who doesn’t have an MVP or Blue-badge says “Did Apple just copy Microsoft?”.

Windows 7 and 8

I liked the intent for Microsoft to bring balance to the UX force, which is a consistent looking brand / feel across all products from now on.
I disliked the execution of the consistent branding. I wished they would keep all design decisions in a central team, which is everything from website design to UI design(s) for products. Allowing individual teams within Microsoft to interpret Metro outside of the central team at this early critical stage is clearly not working. If you want to attract a design enriched audience that want to take inspiration from your work, stop farming it out to agencies who nickel/dime their way through design creation and instead double down on providing a central experience.
I liked the energy that the Windows teams have around device development, we’ve asked for this way back in the days of Surface birth. I think that’s healthy for the industry and will put touch enabled devices into more and more people’s hands sooner rather than later.
I disliked the artificial inflation of the metrics (Windows and Wp7). Inside Microsoft you gauge success based on your ability to ignore qualitative data and instead focus on quantitative given it looks bigger. This often spills over into the marketing engine(s) at Microsoft resulting in just bad reality checks thus creating more distance between the ability to trust anything the brand states.
I disliked the development experience required to get access to the touch enabled world. A friend of mine sent me this break down of tag trends over at Stackoverlow, basically if you are working with Silverlight and/or WPF the chances of you not using Stackoverflow in some form of way is next to zero. WPF and Silverlight dead? Can I have an extra order of reality check for team Sinofsky please?
I liked the notion that Windows 7 is on the rise over Windows XP, the growth you have is great, and the sooner we can stomp on the neck of Windows XP the happier my development sandbox will be.
I disliked the fact that Windows 7 has a huge market share right now, today, that I can’t access and instead am told to “chill” until Windows 8 AppStore comes online via Windows 8. It’s like the Microsoft team decided “How else can I really fuck my customer base over” then some clown in the back puts his hand up and tells them of an idea to hold back AppStore whilst everyone just sits there nodding like he’s telling them that touch will be the future for Microsoft back in 2007 – oh wait… has anyone seen JJ Allard lately as that guys going places.

Silverlight / WPF.

I liked the fact we got some releases for these products, shows there is still someone within the company stoking that release fire.
I liked Silverlights new 3D capabilities, it hints at what could have been possible had we had it sooner. We back in the early days would often discuss how 3D would be our next frontier of innovation for the product and my hat goes off to the engineering efforts for pulling it off – they worked hard.
I dislike that Silverlight release was late and I especially disliked the way it was done. Microsoft phoned in the release, let it happen in the dark of night instead of the grandeur we’ve been used to in the past. That for me sent a clear signal to the developer base – it’s time to move on, finish up your creations and wait for next shiny object to come to a install near you.
I dislike WPF feature list, it was less than we were promised (technically it was more tease / flirt) and lastly the release itself was more of an internal upgrade spilled over onto external HDD’s – that is to say, the features were more derived from internal needs than external. MIC check, is this thing on, WPF is dead in the eyes of Microsoft but its far from dead in the eyes of your average .NET code jockey.
I dislike the energy spent on HTML5 is the future, I’m yet to meet a developer who uses Silverlight/WPF get excited at the idea of abandoning this for HTML5. It must be the other developers I don’t’ see who want it – well that’s what we may be assuming amongst each and everyone one of us “must be the other guy needs it” (ie “Pretty girl syndrome”).

Azure.

I liked the SDK experiences that come with this ….product? … I think it is much easier at times than people give it credit for. I’ve used Amazon quite extensively this year and often will grow impatient that its not like Azure.
I dislike the pricing models for Azure. I’m a fairly intelligent guy but even today I’d not say I can for certain grasp the pricing model needed for me to respond to a work order request from some of my clients (mining companies who pay very large sums of money may I add).
I dislike the fact Scott Guthrie is running this only. In the short time he’s been the custodian of this product its gotten better, great, but Scott should be a higher power across all products. Steve Sinofsky you suck the life out of Microsoft development.
I liked the way Bizspark program is breaking down the pricing barrier of entry for Azure, I was skeptical of this program when it first started (My office was near the creator of this program back in the day, wand watched its birth). I think this program is what stands between adoption and non-adoption but at the same time it has really piss poor marketing behind it so unless you know someone who knows someone, it needs more help (See Catherine Eibner in Microsoft Australia, she’s got her head screwed on tight around how this should work going forward. Promote her to lead the charge here).

Internet Explorer.

I liked the fact IE6 is hated in a more formal fashion at Microsoft, but overall I just wish this product in its entirety would just die. Everyone else is embracing Webkit, stop fighting the obvious and bend over accept you lost proprietary way of life and jump into the stagnant waters of Webkit FTW.

Other.

WCF team can rot in hell. I think there is enough issues around this product to simply state, stop what your doing and think about its effects on your audience. Until then, rot in hell.
Entity Framework team, make a decision and stick with it or at least promote the reasons why you change APIs and their pro’s / con’s.
Zune. Great idea, pitty it never left Redmond zip code.
Surface 2 – Great idea, pitty it never left Redmond zip code.
Bing. I googled Bing, enough said but the fact you didn’t have a Santa Tracker at Christmas – you are dead to me.

Please welcome the XAML platform team to Windows!

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Scott Barnes

I got word of a leaked email early yesterday that confirmed what I had been told in passing gossip – the XAML team being disbanded.

This morning I awoke to not just one email but five of them from my various sources all attached with mixed opinions on what it means. Here is my famous (internally in Microsoft, I would send these style of emails about Adobe and their competitive threats) "What Just Happened" response.

We’re pleased to announce the transition of the XAML
platform team from the Developer Division to the Windows team. While the
team has been working side-by-side with the Windows team for the entire project,
this step brings them into our team formally.

It is time to start moving the battleships into the attack formation. In that time to start the consolidation into the new ux platform we are about to remake again.

On the upside it means you have a consolidated outcome likely to hit our hard-drives in the next 2-3 years on the downside you have what I would call a technology freeze in effect. If the new iteration of WPF or Silverlight does not comply with the vNext vision, do not hold your breath for a new announcement anytime soon that does not involve Windows 8 future(s).

The team will continue their work on Windows 8 as planned
and will join our Developer Experience (DEVX) team. This transition allows us
to bring together our platform development team in a single-management
structure.

That doesn’t sound to bad, I mean on the surface its just a single management restructure. A day in the life of a Microsoftee where every fiscal year or often more than once you are given new managers because the strategy – scratch that – tactics have changed. That in itself is probably your biggest hint of all around the word commitment, this is not just a case of waiting for a restructure to occur once every 5 years – it happens often.

To clarify, do you keep swapping your generals around in war to the point where the troops effectively stop caring who they are reporting to? Probably not a smart idea but nonetheless.

The dev, test, and pm leaders who will be leading the
team reporting to AlesH, YvesN, and LindaAv are:

• Sujal Parikh, Development Manager
• Eduardo Leal-Tostado, Test Manager
• Joe Stegman, Group Program Manager

The leads and individuals joining our team are receiving
this mail and have received communication on next steps.

If most of you who have been involved in the Silverlight ethos are reading then the name, Joe Stegman will probably stand out the most. Joe’s background in the .NET space goes back a ways but in the end Joe’s really been one of the guys under the hierarchy crust of commitment pledges keeping things in the development side of things in check. Officiating his role further in this equation for me is a bit puzzling as it’s kind of the same thing different org tree?

These changes in leadership and organization are
effective today. For the purposes of finishing out the fiscal year and
the performance review process the team will operate under the existing
management structure.

That is a swift maneuver. Nothing surprising though.

Now onto Soma’s email to the troops which kicked the previous email off (Notice how VP’s etc all pile on from one another with "what he said was.." like somehow being apart of the thread is being seen as a role of importance. Classic Microsoft Victory Email formula, just once I’d like them to send out just one email outlining the change. This is what I’m talking about when I say Microsoft Culture is retarded.

I digress.

MICROSOFT CONFIDENTIAL

Over the last couple of years, our Client and Mobile team
has done a fantastic job of building a number of XAML related technologies that
have been a huge value add to the Microsoft client platforms and an
instrumental part of delighting our developer customers. The agility and
customer focus that the team has demonstrated over the years has been a
pleasure to watch.

Ooops. Btw this was supposed to be confidential. So do not tell anybody.

Over the last couple of years? From memory, I recall WPF being around for more than a couple of years? Never mind, I keep forgetting everyone internally has forgotten about WPF.

Soma is kind of saying, "thanks for the hard work troops, you managed to outpace most products in Microsoft with your constant brilliance around the word agility, which being said here comes the but to that placating statement.

Today, we are making some organization changes to bring
our platform technologies under a single management structure. These
changes are centered around three focus areas:

• The team working on XAML technologies for Windows will
move to Windows.

• The team working on XAML technologies for Windows
Phone, Xbox and browser plugin will move to Windows Phone.

• The Client and Mobile tools teams, including Windows
Phone tools and XAML tools, will stay in DevDiv.

These changes are all effective immediately. From a
performance review perspective, we will do this year’s performance review under
the DevDiv organization model.

"Today marks a new day troops, for we storm a new beach" is kind of the response to that next piece.

Firstly you have parts of the XAML team(s) parked inside the Windows organization. First impressions on twitter are that "Way to go! Means XAML and Windows are finally going to get along and create awesome XAML experiences"

Have I not shown you the Annie video? Moreover, have I discussed the Orphan Syndrome? "My dad’s going to come for me, he’s rich you…you..you just wait and see"

To me that read as being a case of cherry picking parts of the team to socket into the windows division and their new coding charter will come next. If it involves XAML it will be based around what XAML vNext is likely to be – HTML5 meets Jupiter.

Same with the Phone team, it is what I would call "please standby for further orders" moments.

As for the tooling teams, well you got Cider and Expression Blend team is what that really comes back to. Given most of the Client employees have left, I am not sure what that means suffice to say I am not holding out for a new release for Sketchflow for starters and I am guessing that the Blend teams are not exactly getting high fives for poor sales and download rates to date. If I were in that team, I would be updating my LinkedIn account quickly.

I want to thank Kevin Gallo and the team for all the
great work that they have done over the years. Moving forward, I’m very
excited to bring the client platform efforts closer to the platform
teams. There is a lot of very exciting and critical work underway as part
of our next wave of platform releases and I am very eagerly looking forward to
seeing the team’s work in the hands of our developers and customers.

Remember when Mary Jo posted a while back on how Kevin Gallo would be taking over the reins of Scott Guthrie. That’s probably the quickest promotion and I’m not ready to say demotion but I’m not ready to say continuance either – that I’ve seen?

The positive part there is the "next wave of platform releases" that sounds a lot like a continuation of what we have in front of us. Make no mistake there will be a Silverlight 5 and a WPF vNext released next fiscal, its already got most of the code done and it would be foolish to not release those when they can – especially after MIX2011.

Releasing those two would also buy you time for the next 2 fiscals at most. As by doing this you create this calming effect around "see, we’re still working on it..honest" to placate the developer hordes.

That is up to you, you can buy into that sure, and it is hard to debunk given there is not much visibility behind what we are likely to see next – especially given this is tradition within the Microsoft roadmap(s).

For me personally, I’d like to corner Microsoft If I could into giving more concrete assurances that whatever the next wave of bets are that they are either backwards compliance or have parity around what we have today in terms of conceptual features today.

Features for me are not will I be able to still hit F5 without changing code. Features for me are the concepts that are on the table today, around how one manages the out of browser and in-browser functionality – everything from casual gaming through to enterprise ready features (printing, isolated storage, data binding etc).

Going forward.

I think what has happened in this email is the equivalent of me saying "I really like this car, now can we take the wheels and put them over there. In addition, can you take the steering wheel and dashboard and put it over there. Lastly, can you take the engine and well. Just leave it in place for second; I’ll get back to you later on where we can put that next"

It’s clear there is a consolidation happening that I think we can all agree on early. How will the consolidation impact the average .NET developer is likely to be dramatic enough to warrant some applications having to have code refactored down the track – you will not escape that sorry.

Does this mean .NET is dead? Who actually knows what .NET vNext will be so it is hard to simply say "yes" and it could very well be a reset of .NET to fix a lot of pent up frustration in the way it sticks together today.

What I am certain of is WPF is definitely officially done. The chance of WPF going beyond what it is today is slim. Some journalists etc. will gloss over this as its not news but let me be clear in saying at Microsoft we really had no clue just how deeply seeded this product became.

In Australia it’s used quite heavily and it’s something I personally noticed whenever I used to travel around the country meeting Microsoft customers (both as an Evangelist and Product Manager). I used to send emails internally stating "I think we underestimated is usage, as it definitely appears to have more devs using than Silverlight" which was later brushed aside as being "Not realistic".

I think post September the announcements that are to follow will give these warnings probably some second thoughts around what parking WPF in the retired bay is likely to mean for Microsoft when it comes to the words "trust" and "commitment"

The product and developer satisfaction surveys for the last few years haven’t been something you’d brag about internally which for me indicates a strong sense of "fatigue" within the ranks of our beloved .NET developer communities.

It’s now one thing to announce what the next version of .NET will be its entirely different thing to convince and sell these fatigue customers that this is defiantly the bet this time. Silverlight, WPF and WinForm are available today and millions are shipping software solutions using them.

Microsoft now has to figure out a way to convince the millions that the "Windows 8" wave of vNext will fix all of these problems and more – and – will not require a reduction in feature parity along with extra boost in tooling.

If I know, my Microsoft and I like to think I do, good luck J

Full email below:

From: Julie Larson-Green
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 9:35 AM
To: Grant George; Jon DeVaan; Julie Larson-Green; John
Cable; Yves Neyrand; Craig Fleischman; Bambo C. Sofola; Scott Herrboldt; Greg
Chapman; Julie Bennett; Jeff Johnson; Ales Holecek; Mohammed El-Gammal; Chuck
Chan; Michael Fortin; Eric Traut; Jensen Harris; Linda Averett; Alex Simons
(WINDOWS); Gabriel Aul; Dennis Flanagan; Iain McDonald; Samuel Moreau; Dean Hachamovitch;
Michael Angiulo; Antoine Leblond; Tami Reller; Chris Jones (WINDOWS LIVE);
Jonathan Wiedemann; Ulrike Irmler; Adrianna Burrows
Cc: XAML Team; Kevin Gallo; S. Somasegar; Terry Myerson;
Sharman Mailloux Sosa; Brad Fringer; Steven Sinofsky
Subject: Please welcome the XAML platform team to
Windows!

We're pleased to announce the transition of the XAML
platform team from the Developer Division to the Windows team.  While the
team has been working side-by-side with the Windows team for the entire project,
this step brings them into our team formally.  

The team will continue their work on Windows 8 as planned
and will join our Developer Experience (DEVX) team. This transition allows us
to bring together our platform development team in a single-management
structure.
The dev, test, and pm leaders who will be leading the
team reporting to AlesH, YvesN, and LindaAv are:

• Sujal Parikh, Development Manager
• Eduardo Leal-Tostado, Test Manager
• Joe Stegman, Group Program Manager
The leads and individuals joining our team are receiving
this mail and have received communication on next steps.

These changes in leadership and organization are
effective today.  For the purposes of finishing out the fiscal year and
the performance review process the team will operate under the existing
management structure.

There will be an informal Q&A session today to
welcome everyone and answer any questions that folks might have.
• XAML team welcome – 2:00-3:00 in building 37/1701

Please join me in welcoming these folks to our
organization!
Julie

From: S. Somasegar
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 9:16 AM
To: Client and Mobile Team
Cc: Developer Division FTE; Steven Sinofsky; Julie
Larson-Green; Terry Myerson; David Treadwell
Subject: Bringing together client platform efforts

MICROSOFT CONFIDENTIAL

Over the last couple of years, our Client and Mobile team
has done a fantastic job of building a number of XAML related technologies that
have been a huge value add to the Microsoft client platforms and an
instrumental part of delighting our developer customers.  The agility and
customer focus that the team has demonstrated over the years has been a
pleasure to watch.  

Today, we are making some organization changes to bring
our platform technologies under a single management structure.  These
changes are centered around three focus areas:
• The team working on XAML technologies for Windows will
move to Windows.
• The team working on XAML technologies for Windows
Phone, Xbox and browser plugin will move to Windows Phone.
• The Client and Mobile tools teams, including Windows
Phone tools and XAML tools, will stay in DevDiv. 

These changes are all effective immediately.  From a
performance review perspective, we will do this year’s performance review under
the DevDiv organization model.

I want to thank Kevin Gallo and the team for all the
great work that they have done over the years.  Moving forward, I'm very
excited to bring the client platform efforts closer to the platform
teams.  There is a lot of very exciting and critical work underway as part
of our next wave of platform releases and I am very eagerly looking forward to
seeing the team’s work in the hands of our developers and customers.  

The follow-up emails will provide more details on the
changes to those impacted.  Please join me in wishing Kevin and the team
all the very best as we move forward.  If you have any questions about
this change, please let your manager or me know.

-somasegar

The mission to land a .NET developer on Jupiter.

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Scott Barnes

Ask not what Microsoft can do for you but what you can do for Microsoft. That’s really the inspiring quote that President of the new colonization group – aka Windows – needs to say to the unwashed masses of tomorrow.

Microsoft is taking on a mission that looks to go beyond the moon, they want to land on Jupiter and it will be done with Apollo. Still confused?

If you’ve not paid attention to all the codenames flying about the place you’d be forgiven to be confused as there’s a space theme happening and with these code names its quite interesting to see how the objectives for the next generation of Microsoft is likely to shape up.

Jupiter is rumored to be the reset button to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight. A reset is the latest suspicion as just yesterday I found out that the XAML ethos within Microsoft has been disbanded and set to various corners of the company. Some went to Internet Explorer team, some went to Windows teams and others went to Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Why disband the teams? It is time for pencils down folks, let us stop piling on code for the existing stuff but now let us set our sights for the future, let’s be bold. Let us be daring. Why land on the moon when you can land on Jupiter floating on a cloud of Azure? (Ok, I lost myself in that metaphor as well).

Ok fine, I have gone through the seven stages of Silverlight/WPF grief and I am at acceptance I think.

The Mission.

In order to better prepare for the mission ahead, let us think about the various things we need to account for prior to launch (September).

Replace Crew Members.

Inside Microsoft there is a lot of toxic turmoil going due to internal re-orgs (which is fairly common) that fueled with how the Global Financial Crisis has affected employees etc. it’s no secret that Microsoft are losing some quite influential and dare I say, hard to replace staff to places like Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on. I personally know of three employees who have hated working for Microsoft for quite some time but have been stuck due to housing prices in Redmond etc not being ready enough for a resale – that is – until Google, Adobe, Facebook and soon Amazon have campuses of their own in Seattle.

Now the super geeks have alternative employment options. Microsoft is now on notice, treat me better or I will leave. The later choice has been winning in my opinion and the more the new found employees have sent me messages of "Omg, its way better over here than Microsoft" which has to be salt in some current employee’s wounds whom are likely staring down the barrel of uncertainty in the company given its end of year commitment scoring mixed with the demise of what we used to call the Silverlight/WPF & Blend ethos. What to do!.

Reaching Parity.

A gentleman and fellow .NET scholar Jose has done the best he could in reverse engineering Direct UI (rumored to be the leaked incarnation of Jupiter). He has some insights that are both great and disappointing at the same time. The great part is it could very well be the next iteration of what has to come in the landscape of C# and XAML for tomorrow’s UX Pioneers.

The downside is its 3-5 or maybe more steps backwards in the current feature parity you have all eagerly waited for over the past 4 years. There are some fundamentals in the room whilst there are concerns around some of the other features that may or may not make the cut for version one.

If I know Microsoft and I like to think I do, this is likely to be yet another one of those traditional "version 1" moments whereby the team(s) behind the product eventually stumble across the finish line, exhausted but barely breathing enough to shout "Give me feedback on what you want in version 2, it will be better I promise" followed by some metaphor about how it’s a marathon and not sprint to the finish line (We got great mileage out of that with Silverlight and I dare say you could get a few more products out of it yet).

The tooling is likely to be not in place during this version 1 lifecycle as my sources tell me that the Blend Team aren’t cranking out the vNext improved world of Microsoft. I know Steve Sinofsky has had a few ambitions about what the Tooling should look like in the perfect world of Windows vNext frontier and I am guessing he did not play well with others in the Devdiv team(s) to share such ambitions.

That being said, either there is a skunk works tooling team hidden in some random building in Microsoft that others do not know about or the tooling story behind this next frontier is unlikely to be in place before Sept or for whenever this next version of our beloved Silverlight/WPF ethos occurs.
What I mean to say is welcome all to Microsoft 2005. Hold onto your Winforms or ASP.NET MVC for a little bit longer and for those of you in Silverlight/WPF investment land(s) – try to not focus on the future but the now (best to keep your code base as lean as possible and not to tightly wound in client-side logic).

Put vital organs into Escrow.

Microsoft are quick to throw technology at a problem first and then ponder as to why the problem existed. I’ve often personally seen strategies – wait, that’s not correct, strategy requires forward thinking – tactical decisions (better) made around trying to grow developer audiences.

The assumption are

"ok, we’re not making our tech palatable enough, lets steal stuff from Ruby On Rails, Apple or Oracle to make it better".

The absolute harsh reality is often a lot of non-Microsoft customer(s) etc. just don’t like Microsoft (Ever liked a girl/guy and they don’t like you back? You try changing your clothes, hair, car etc. and still nothing. Welcome to the Microsoft Developer outreach program, you will fit right in).

The other side of this coin I guess is those of you who adore Microsoft for what they are. You spend thousands of your own dollars to go to various events to listen to Microsoft confuse the absolute crap out of you. The problem is lately, they seem to be a company you just cannot bet on for the future.

Grandiose plans to land on Jupiter may be bold, daring and exciting but is it dependable? Can this company commit to a master plan and is this a plan or just a tactical political brain dump mixed with a lot of Microsoft experimentation.

Is it a case now of not waiting for the next Service Pack but now waiting to see if a product can get past version 3 and 5 before you really consider it as a viable option of the future?

In order to prepare for this next mission, someone has to donate some good will to the fans of Microsoft technology. That means you cannot stick to the ye olde "need to know information" mentality. You got to bring your roadmap(s) for the future and you got to show us that you’re telling the truth that you want to aim for Jupiter and not some closer planet or worse – the unknown void beyond Jupiter.

Commit and stop being assclowns.

Commit to us so that we may commit to you. No more lies, No more "I’ve got a secret, can you guess!" and lastly no more internal political child play spilling over and into the blogosphere. It’s time to be a big boy company and use big boy strategies with big boy plans mixed with a lot of big girl personality (somehow that did the ladies no favors).

If we are to take on this mission, it’s time for a smarter playbook around transparency and if Steve Sinofsky is willing to bring the "come to Jesus" moment for the company around consolidating the entire product lines into a consistent continuous experience across all devices with a developer/designer experience to boot. Great, I personally will print out a t-shirt that says "I’m back in team Steve" (heh my old team inside Microsoft was called Team Steve…Steve the manager though was a arrogant jerk, different story, different time).

Right now its just a case of me holding up a really sick puppy that others have kicked and telling you all about the neglect its owners have given it. (If I quote that metaphor I was given last night by a friend).

Windows 8 : Making new friends, Ratcheting Momentum and influencing anger.

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Scott Barnes

After just having a discussion with a journalist today, a question was put to me that I felt I should share some more information around – Why do you think the developers appear to be angry with Windows 8?

It is not that I think developers are angry about code name "Windows 8" being well HTML5/JavaScript friendly in fact it is probably one of those situations where you would easily go "great, not for me but hey who knows how things turn out down the road". It is also not the fact that Microsoft have come out and hinted strongly at the idea of dropping marketing support for .NET going forward in favor of HTML5/JavaScript cocktail of weirdness.

I think what’s happening is developers across the globe in what appears to be millions now (currently on Silverlight.net forums there’s a few threads ratcheting around 11million views – which is 11x the traffic per month that site gets) all basically releasing a lot of pent-up annoyance at the communication blackout – yet again.

I think this is a case of "the last straw" and it has been lurking for quite some time about Microsoft and a consistent amount of failings around corporate communication 101. To some this appears on the surface to be some idiot in PR being asleep at the helm again (keep in mind often Microsoft outsources its PR to companies like Waggener Edstrom) and so it could be a case of a room full of people pointing at one another for the "what do we say" moment(s). I highly doubt that, I’d wager this is an executive decision and its likely driven by the concept of ratcheting customer momentum for a final reveal in September.

Note: I recently had the VP of Corporate Communications for Microsoft follow me on Twitter post the Windows 8 Fallout(s)…. Why?

Creating a disruption in the market with the sole intended purpose of getting people around the world to talk more about you in mixed emotions isn’t a brilliant new tactic – it was done in the Windows 7 launch with the Jerry Seinfiled ads that Microsoft bet around $300million on. Realistically this strategy can often work (we’ve used this formula a few times with Silverlight in the early days) but at the same time it’s what I’d class as a high risk strategy given you could scare people too much.

This is of course speculation as at the end of the day the more Microsoft staffs I talk to internally about this the more I get the growing sense that majority of the staff internally are also in a complete blackout as well. Insiders within Microsoft are telling me that they are both concerned and frustrated at the lack of information coming from Team Sinofsky to the point where they are not interested in whether or not .NET lives or dies but how the heck they are going to clean up after this reveal occurs.

I probed further and asked what kind of convincing points are needed in order to illustrate to the presidential overlords that having 11million+ views all seeing the words ".NET" and "Dead" is probably not a smart play here and short of announcing .NET 5.0 at //BUILD/ you’re digging a very large hole. The response that I later got forwarded to me was one from an executive that stated that unless they see major accounts being withdrawn all that really is happening is interest and group of developers getting emotional about it all.

Yeah, my first impression was "what a jackass" but having sat in similar meetings like this when Adobe AIR was first considered a major threat to Microsoft, all I can say is that’s exactly how the company thinks at a higher level. It’s a numbers game, and hearing stories like "my friend just told me they are moving away because of this" small stories don’t add up to situations like the US Govt calling Microsoft to say "Yeah, the whole .NET confusion thing is something we aren’t happy with and so we’ll be moving to Java/Oracle – thanks bye" moments aren’t flowing just yet or likely to.Measuring account losses due to an event is somewhat hard as deep at your core you can see that the potential is definitely there despite the deafening "the sky is falling!!" emotions running high.

The reality is its unlikely to create havoc for at least a few years should they come out and say tomorrow ".NET is dead, thx" as looking at Windows XP & Internet Explorer 6 its obvious that Microsoft technology is very hard to kill of even with official announcements.

What is the TAX then? What is the one thing you can beat Microsoft around the head with that will send some sense to Redmond?

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Developers, Developers, Developers is that answer.

Microsoft are losing a battle in replenishing the .NET developer share, it’s alleged that for every 1x .NET developer that departs the Microsoft ecosystem there should be at least 2x more to fill their shoes. The reality it’s the opposite – allegedly.

Ok, so we highlight the depletion of the ranks and state "..if you continue scare the kids with the comms blackout that number will increase! And so you be able to control the depletion rates.."

That will not work either, as HTML5 and JavaScript is a nice big juicy cake to sink ones potential teeth into. As the big bet is that if you can convince the world’s developer base – the ones NOT using .NET today – to jump onboard with the new Windows8 concoction called Metro meets HTML5/JavaScript across all screens. Bing! (No pun intended) you just got a completely new market share you did not have yesterday.

That is the bet at the moment, win hearts and minds with a unified platform the world has agreed upon across all languages – HTML and JavaScript. Sadly, the .NET developer base is being used right now as collateral damage and is considered acceptable loses.

This is dangerous game being played and all the years I’ve been involved in Microsoft this is by far the most interesting and distracting time for the company. In under 48hrs in my opinion Team-Steve managed to undermined and undo a total of three years work by the various people within the Silverlight teams so should the reveal in September be a case of "Look we were just kidding, here’s our roadmaps going forward.." it would still set Silverlight back quite a lot in terms of regaining what marketing momentum is left for the product.

The reality is Silverlight’s marketing & evangelism has been severely reduced from where it once was and the products are now in auto-pilot mode (aka "they are now matured" which is code word for being bored with it).

Evangelism efforts are going to have to dig deep post reveal on September and to be openly honest their record lately for influencing the influencers has been murky if not non-existent. It’s a contact sport Evangelism and I’ve noticed in the past 2-3 years more so that the steam it once had has diminished quite significantly (due to budget cut-backs and basically VP of DPE – Walid Abu-Hadba driving the entire practice into the ground).

It is not that people are angry, they are confused and disappointed.

Let’s hope this bet pays of Team-Steve as the guy before you made a big bet as well. The last we heard of him now is that he’s trying to make it into the music scene so one hopes you’ve learnt to play guitar Mr Sinofsky

UXCAST–Making Isometric Workflows inside Expression Blend–Part 1

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Scott Barnes

I did it! and I feel exposed. I sat down tonight and put together my first of what may or may not be many (depending on how badly I get crit) screencasts around UI / UX + Microsoft Technology.

In this video, I show folks how one can take a workflow design concept and inject it into your canvas of choice but in an Isometric format. I like Isometrics simply because you can get more of a spatial view than most screen angles that and it derives from my old Pixel-art days so..yeah..Isometrics are the way!

Hope you enjoy, and feedback welcomed.

RIGANEIC – UXCAST – Isometrics in Expression Blend from Scott Barnes on Vimeo.

In this screencast I show how one can take a Isometric workflow map and transpose it into Expression Blend 4.

WPF lip service at it again

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Scott Barnes

I’ve been watching the WPF Disciples list regarding FIXWPF with some obvious keen interest. The thread has taken on an interesting level of discussion and guys like Pete Brown are doing the right thing, listening, responding and taking notes.

Jaime however has jumped on and given the – we’ve heard it all before – riot act around the UX Platform guidance. You know the one, Good, Great and Ultimate splits sprinkled with “it depends” and basically comes around to the pitch that Microsoft is probably best known for around commitment pledges.

This isn’t an attack on Jaime, I’ve worked with him before and I liked his work in the past, as all he’s doing is talking to party lines and it will be the same guidance you are given no matter who you talk to inside Microsoft.

That being said the bulk of it is lip service and i’ll explain why.

RE: HTML5 vs Silverlight vs WPF (Good, Great and Ultimate).

This guidance is probably the oldest response to keeping the three pillars apart. It hasn’t changed in over 3 years and is unlikely until you see some dramatic increase in footprint regarding Internet Explorer 9 + HTML5.

The idea is to provide developers a linked approach to how the three dovetail with one another and when you look at it from the right angle it almost looks plausible. The reality however is it is poor guidance for one and secondly it doesn’t address the question.

The question really being asked is “which should I bet on” not “which is the right technology for the right job” as quite frankly for 80% of solutions out there i’d confidently state that all three could achieve your needs for line of business applications. The three each have their own taxes you will end up paying but welcome to software and that’s life.

Back to the question, which should you bet on and this is where the lip service falls short. As the question is also asking which is Microsoft likely to continue investing into – the fact that Jamie for example is no longer a full time WPF evangelist and is now in the Wp7 evangelism rhythms is an indication to that answer. No Microsoftie is going to come out and say “yeah, you better get off WPF unless your writing C++ bridges to .NET, as its going to get murky soon” as the last time a softie even hinted at that kind of raw honesty was Bob Muglia and he was a Senior Vice President – currently looking for a new job.

Choosing between the three really is coming down to your team mates, your needs and lastly your personal investment in learning / continuance in your career. They are really the three core principles involved in making the choice between the three and the usual good, great and ultimate speech has never really returned any hint on success – I dare Microsoft to provide evidence of success here.

If your team mates are all HTML developers with ASP.NET Web Forms skills, then the question they are all having is around which is the easiest and best route to success next. WPF can provide you a core foundation for Silverlight/WPF development but it will test your patience and confidence levels greatly. There is a lot of information decay online around which version of the framework/API still work today vs when they did in the past and lastly WPF seems to have more questions than Silverlight go unanswered – according to StackOverflow.com.

Silverlight is still up for grabs although its clearly shifted its strategy from when I was on the team to be more of a Windows Phone 7 platform and less about the web more so as time continues to flow.

HTML5 is basically a bunch of new tags that are ready for browsers, but in the end you’re still hacking around in the weeds with JavaScript and CSS. To be fair, if you’re an ASP.NET WebForms team, then HTML5 would probably be the quick win – but – its not as much fun as Silverlight / WPF?

My point is, its confusing and the usual lip service really doesn’t bode well for Microsofties as they come off looking like they are a PR machines for one and secondly any trust within WPF vs Silverlight discussion has been eroded due to constant shifts in vision – clearly it highlights that this has been and will continue to be highly tactical reactive product management and less strategic.

RE: Customers want us to invest more into Silverlight.

Jaime goes on to say:

First of all, a lot of our customers are telling us to invest more into Silverlight. Let’s say (again made up) that demand is 4-to 1. How do we justify a revamp of the graphics architecture in WPF. This is not trivial work; the expertise in this space is limited, we can’t clone our folks to 5x to meet everyone’s needs.

Unless Microsoft’s feedback channels have gone through a massive upgrade / radical change in the last 6 months, I call bullshit on that one. The customers are likely to be folks like NetFlix or Vertigo? (we have no real tangible customer feedback pipelines in Microsoft. It was a nightmare to sift through the chaos to get such answers) and secondly the reality of that comment is what I call “Oh dear, he didn’t say that” moment. If i was a journalist i would use that firstly as fodder for “See Microsoft just stated they have no interest investing into WPF” – not only would it be fair game, it’s obviously correct so it’s also not healthy right now.

It’s important to also add that if you starve a product of its marketing budget, then your overall awareness for the product is going to drop dramatically. It’s also fair to state that if the bulk of your attention across the board within the company is on Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight, then its even more likely the customer focus is skewed towards what you’ve been waiving and shaking your hands at the most. To use a metaphor “It’s like giving a child candy and then asking if they should give you more vegetables?”

My only real response to that question is who’s going to walk up to AutoDesk and tell them “Well, we could fix performance issues in 3DS MAX 2010 with you, but sorry, Silverlight is our preferred bet… best you figure out an alternative route filled with C++ and roll your own rendering pipeline".

Jaime goes on to address the likely cost of WPF

Let’s assume we did take on the work. My guess (again, I am not engineering) is that it would take two years to implement and thorougly test a release. At the stage that WPF is at, a rearchitecture or huge changes on the graphics stack would be 80% about testing and 20% about the dev work. It is not a trivial amount of work. Would we get the performance you want across myriad of devices? We don’t know. WPF bet on hardware, and there is new devices out there that are trading hardware for battery, weight, or simply for cost. it would suck to do that much work, make you wait a long time, and then not get there. Let’s get real on the asks; you say “improve perf” but you are asking us to do a “significant re-write”; these two asks are different.

He has a point, it would be a significant impact to the resources allocated to WPF to get it back to the core promise that was made in 2007 – trust us right? things keep changing? we don’t have a plan just right now, but as things happen we hopefully will!.

It’s a good thing that there are 200+ engineers right now ready to pounce on this problem so it should be a large amount of work, but with that many engineering cycles nothings not attackable according to Scott Guthrie, CVP of Developer Division.

That was a cheap shot Barnes! and it was. My response to Jaime’s remarks there would be “This affects me how?” as in the end you, Microsoft asked me to invest in you years ago. I did, and now you’re telling me its too hard and costly for you to invest back into me? how is that fair and again why am I trusting you over and over when you keep changing the rules? Is this not an abusive relationship now?

RE: We speak to customers.

Comments like this for me a red flags -

3) You are asking us to listen to our customers. We agree there and that is exactly what we are doing. Please keep in mind, you are not the only customer – even if you are my favorite one -.

The reason they are red flags as the response at the end of the day says “trust us, we have this covered” as nowhere does Microsoft really ever decompress what customers they have spoken to and any substantial numbers to support it. For all you know, NetFlix and Nokia are the two customers they spoke to and NetFlix executive being on the board of Microsoft whilst Nokia’s new CEO was one of the ex-executives at Microsoft – well you can see how easily you could tear the argument apart if you set about doing so.

The point is, there’s no response you can give as the actual comment is supposed to make you feel isolated and that what you’re saying really is most likely a vocal minority.

Here’s the real deal guys and pay attention to this one as it will bake your noodles. Inside Microsoft there is no one team that handles customer feedback. Multiple teams do it and they approach it from a variety of angles. In the entire time i was a Product Manager and Evangelist within the WPF/Silverlight teams I never once saw or even heard of a central database of customer feedback. The closest we had was an annual survey / report that we collected which gave a health check of the entire Microsoft brand & its products. It was quite shallow in gauging what customers wanted and it’s main purpose was to be used as a large measuring stick for all roles almost in Microsoft to gauge success/failure was per year.

The only way you would get data from customers was if you invited them to Redmond (which is effectively the same as a band inviting a fan over for dinner and asking them what they could do better) or you outsource your needs to a company like Adaptive Path, Forester, Gartner etc to come up with a survey / research around the topic at hand (Don’t be shocked folks, but Gartner Research can be bought for the right price).

Having a listening post inside Microsoft around what customers want or need is chaotic at best and it depends on who’s listening and what the initial agenda is – more so how it maps across. It has nothing to do with constructive feedback or channels of delivery as the higher the decision making goes the further the customer feedback gets from these decision makers.

RE: Let’s compromise?

Jaime does go on to discuss the compromise:

he WPF has looked at the trade-offs, and risk many times. We are also looking at what customers need. Jer, to you it is all about graphics. To many others, it is about data. So, how do we serve all customers??

The strategy is exactly what you have seen/heard:

1) WPF 4.5 is going to have some significant data binding performance improvements.

2) We are not redoing the graphics framework, but we are doing a lot of work to let you interoperate with lower level graphics so that if you need more graphics perf you can get it, and still keep the RAD of the rest of the framework.

I often see this style of response from Microsofties (hell, I used to give it). It’s one of those responses you just go “What the f… If you’re going to piss on my head from above at least have the courtesy of telling me its fresh water harvested from a pure spring – make an attempt to keep the illusion alive at the very least.” yes its colorful but the point is, please stop treating me like I’m an idiot as I’ve not given you any indication i think that of you have I?

Cheap shot again, sorry Jaime but we both know that’s a classic “let’s take this offline – abort abort” throw away pacification tactic. As what it really translates to:

“Look, we don’t have engineering cycles to really fix the core problem so what we are going to do is shift the focus in other areas in the hope you will just leave us alone long enough until we can regroup for a better story next year”

Cheap shots again.. but.. in my defense, I’m just thinking on both sides of this conversation. How would I react to the responses in WPF Disciples as a Product Manager / Evangelist and lastly how would i respond to the answers I just gave as a customer / adopter of Microsoft UX Platform.

Is this about Jaime or WPF though?

Now, normally remarks like the ones Jaime has given on a public mailing list are usually ones you give a free pass to with regards to most Microsoft staffers. As at times you find staff arm themselves in the riot gear and just bolt straight into the fray of civil geek unrest and try their best to calm peoples opinions from spiraling into a negative back to a positive.

Jaime, isn’t a young pup fresh out of Microsoft boot camp. He’s a seasoned Technical Evangelist at Corp, who over the years has had deep roots with the WPF team in terms of influence and awareness of their future(s). I’ve personally worked with Jaime a few times and he is very talented and smart person, so my point here is that what he’s just outlined was a slip between what he knows privately as to what’s going on vs what he shouldn’t disclose publically. Furthermore, he speaks for the WPF team and no matter how many times he can throw the prefix “personally, my thoughts are” to his remarks, if that’s what he’s thinking then its highly likely that’s the outcome you’re likely expecting or going to expect.

This isn’t about Jaime though, and I cannot stress enough that I have enormous respect for him professionally and personally. It’s about Microsoft and WPF, and this is simply a highly visible case of internal thinking spilling over into a mailing list. I cannot stress this enough, if this reads as me kicking the crap out of Jaime’s remarks on a thread then please can i simply say it’s not personal its the role Jaime is acting out that is up for grabs. You represent Microsoft, you speak as if Bill Gates himself sat in a room full of journalists and outlined his thoughts, there is no “but he’s a nice guy” moments.

This is why i have created FIXWPF.org and will work night / day to expose this kind of lip service but instead of opinionated pieces or argumentative out of context text grabs, i instead will hope to back it in a more factual manner with real-world data, so situations like this aren’t a case of constant streams of :-

“trust us, we have it covered”.

No you don’t have it covered, as it costs to much remember?

UX Lab: Changing the way you handle CRUD workflow

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Scott Barnes

I often see a lot of consistent patterns in the way applications are being built when it comes to generic create, read, update and delete (CRUD) workflows .

The usual pattern is that a screen starts off with a add/remove action followed by a very large datagrid and probably some paging. A user would then refine the datagrid’s result set, make a selection either inline on the datagrid or opens a modal via an action like double click which then presents the end user with a more detailed view of that record. This is probably so generic in the way it’s being approached that I’d probably dare say nobody’s really sat down and thought about its actual practicality – as it seems to be the unofficial standard for screen design (well the bloody apps I see day in day out anyway).

This pattern for me isn’t something I’m a fan of, maybe because it’s so common now that I simply crave for an alternative approach? I crave this alternative because I feel at times the workflow in itself seems oddly backwards?

The part that catches me out, is the overall approach taken. For instance, the end user has come to the said screen to get a detailed view of a record – maybe a summary, but doubtful. They wade around in the various amounts of turn-keys (filter settings) until they settle on a pattern of data that they can then scan (hunt/browse) for and proceed to get the modal open for a detailed view. It appears that majority of the practical usage is saved towards the end of the process pipeline? in that getting a detailed snapshot of the record seems to be an extension to the UI instead of probably being the focal point of the UI?

Armed with this style of thinking, today, I set out to try an alternative approach to the way this workflow could work. I decided to simply inverse the workflow, in that take a typical Security (add/remove users etc) workflow and try a different approach (see below).

The idea is that when you click on “Find Users” the screen opens up to your summary view, in that since I’m logged in it reflects back my entire account profile found within the system. There are then a number of actions one can take in and around deciding on what to do next but the main key piece here for me, is well I’ve shown you the end point up front – I’ve seeded a contract with the end user around what screens will look like once they’ve found a user of their choosing.

How do I change the user from me to someone else?

The change button in this screen kicks off what is traditionally the first screen, in that if the end user clicks on [Change..] a modal will open over the top, presenting the end user with search criteria. The user then fires up some search results and can specify filters for their search. Once the end user has found the right user of their choosing, the modal closes and the original security profile (you) switches to the person in question.

Ok, I’m kind of with you, but what benefits does this give then?

I personally think it shifts the user into a more focused approach to how they handle the workflow. It’s quite easy to snap in a datagrid + tree control and hit F5/Ship. This approach in my opinion approaches the workflow differently, in that it asks the user to be specific in what they are really after. If you’re in the User Administration area of this application, then what is it you want to do? Manage users is probably the typical response here. So, let’s let them manage a User in a more focused fashion by exposing other areas of interest in a screen that’s more content specific and less cramped / buried in a floating modal.

The typical “list all users” with paging approach is quite unnecessary real estate to reserve for prime time, as well it’s merely a stepping stone to the end point. It’s almost throw away in the task process should the user want to change “John Doe” password or check when that user last logged in etc.

You could even approach the way I’ve done it differently, by simply providing a search box at the top with a label “Find User..”. Once the user types in “Scott Bar..” (auto complete) like experience fires, but instead of a pulldown it could then go off and grab all twitter feeds, flickr photos, facebook profiles, linked profiles etc and just start showing them on screen. This kind of approach is more helpful when you’re trying to figure out who that “Scott” fellow was last night, as now you’re meet with multiple forms of media to help guide your search detective skills down to a more informed end point.

The point is, it’s taking the equation of CRUD and flipping it into a more interactive experience. Why invest all this time and energy into some of the new UX platform’s out there only to use generic patterns like the original one mentioned in this post? How can you evolve this pattern further and where can the users gain in terms of data + contextual view beyond what they’ve typically been given.

It’s a new world people, try and break a few things as when you break something you in turn are rewarded with knowledge on where risk/failure can occur. Much more informative approach than “well everyone else is doing so i assume it works” policies :0

To be tested..

Going full Metro.

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Scott Barnes

I uploaded one single Metro inspired design that I once did for Microsoft India/Asia and the next thing I know I’m being asked to do more for other clients. I shouldn’t complain, money is money and I’m the type of guy who will unzip if the price is right – there’s a lasting image.

It seems that when you show someone large monochrome simple shaped designs, folks often gravitate towards them over some of my other usual gradient filled drop shadow filled designs. At first, I am shocked if not appalled at how they could dismiss one design which takes me much longer for a design that essentially looks like a colored in Wireframe mockup.

Metro simply put feels like I am shoplifting design. It’s not a lot of work and the main focus I have is controlling myself from adding too many elements to the screen or keeping the typography unbalanced. Color selection is also important as you have to keep that tightly controlled otherwise it ends up being a rainbow pixel barfing.

Metro is Developer art friendly.

One such client I have at the moment has expressed an interest in getting me to come in – as per usual – at the tail end of a sprint season of coding and well make it look “pretty”. They have also asked if I could weaponise the approach so that other teams within the company could leverage the same work within their projects.

What to do.. I need to make my design(s) for WPF/Silverlight engaging, useable and lastly repeatable. Metro like a super hero from the 1950’s, makes its way to the top of the conscious thought pile. Turns out those crazy beige loving engineering culture filled geeks in Redmond may actually be onto something here. Metro’s secret is that it creates a way in which designers and developers can finally reach a compromise on design.

Using large blocky shapes and minimalist approach to screen while peppering large amounts of typography whilst also not saying the words “Wireframes colored in” – boom, you have a design revolution within the .NET community its name – METRO.

Metro isn’t all monochrome rainbows and puppies…

There is a catch though with Metro, one that as a designer is starting to ride my last nerve. They all look the freaking same. I can’t help it, I get into a pattern and before I know it I’m knocking out a mutated design that I did 5x metro designs ago. I feel like I am cheating now, it feels bad that I am in what I call a design rutt and It’s hard to break out of given most inspirational sites like TheFWA.com have no metro goodness.

There are only so many times I can look at the Microsoft Health / Futures videos before I also end up copying their designs without realizing it. I simply crave others like me who are injecting large enough doses of Metro to stop a gradient filled elephant in its tracks. I need to get off this crack or I’ll end up living in a typecast world filled with basic shapes and colors.

Metro’s concept isn’t isolated to Microsoft.

I am also starting to see the world in glyphs, typography and bold colors. I pass a highway sign and I go “ooh, that color could be used in a design of mi…stop it!…stop..”. I pass elevator filled corridors and I can’t but help notice Helvetica is the weapon of choice most of the time in commercial metro filled buildings. I’m going full metro!

Metro is the future of glass.

This morning, watching my usual twitter feeds I come across a re-tweet from one of my design demi-god like heroes – Mark Coleran. In this link filled with the future(s) nectar I so willingly crave, is a video projecting what the world would be like if we had more glass and multi-touch screens. At first I am absorbing this eye candy like a fantasy user interface addict that I am – only, boom..there it is, metro.

I’m Scott Barnes, and I am now addicted to metro. If you or a family member are suffering from Metro affixation, please contact me together we can find a way out of this disease / addiction.

If you want to see more of my designs, you can do so here:

What happens when you bring the UX person in last.

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Scott Barnes

How many of you have been to a conference that has a UX/UI Person on stage discussing the mystic art of software development and design? In that said session they at some point raise the slide that outlines you should engage a UX person early and think about UI/UX from the start.

How many of you then go back to your respective cubicles, nodding in agreement but then immediately go into a new project ignoring the said suggestion?

Don’t lie, I see you looking back in a nervous manner and shouting out reasons like “Well, we didn’t have the budget” or “My boss wouldn’t …” etc.

Meet Mr Wolf

Just like in Pulp Fiction, a guy like me is called in after the crime has been committed. I’m the guy you bring in after you accidently killed someone and its my job to navigate the mess in order to get you back to your life without prison time. If I succeed, you don’t’ spend the rest of your life in jail if I fail, well, learn how to fight using prison rules.

When I come into a team in this situation, the thing that I notice the most is they are looking for guidance around a plan, in that it’s a case of me analyzing the situation, asking a series of specific questions relating to the said scene and then giving them a task list to execute on – whilst being clear to stick to my rules or well, good luck in jail.

The problem with this approach at times is that you have usually one or two people in the room who ask for your help but at the same time are giving your orders on how to clean the mess up quicker – each time they do this they in turn increase their chances of prison time.

It’s a hard balance to participate in from my perspective as I have to figure out a way to firstly give a design and experience to the software’s targeted end users in a way that isn’t just a screen after screen of tree controls and datagrids whilst at the same time having a low impact to the codebase and lastly but more importantly doing it within a very tight timeframe/budget?

Its hard work and you know what, its going to cost you so don’t whine about it.

Had you called me from the start, it would have been a completely different outcome and yes, you’ve heard this thousands of times at whatever conference you last attended – engage a UX person early and let them direct the screens overall compensations – design first engineer second.

I personally have been pulled into over 30+ projects in the last year that have this exact situation unfolding before me, in that it’s the last two sprints of a project, I’m playing a massive game of UX Tetris with WPF/Silverlight or Wp7 and I’m constantly being harassed on time/budget questions.

It sux but that’s the reality of the role I play in this business, the guy who can code and design at the same time. Its why I charge the amounts I do and sure the price attracts attention but in truth If you follow my rules and approach you will come out with a finished result. If you interject along the way with the way you think it should be done, fine, I’ll do it your way but if it fails – given the inexperience so far, it will – then to be fair, you were warned.

My way or the wrong way.

The way I approach situations where I’m brought in at the last hour is via the following routine.

The Primitives. In every application you have what I call the primitives, in that these are the buttons, modal windows, textbox’s, scrollbars, checkboxes etc. .. the stuff you get out of the box for free with .NET. My first attack posture is to start building out a resource dictionary library for you to bootstrap your UI against. In that for example TextBox and Button controls I start putting into what I call the UI-Shirt-Sizes, Large, Medium and Small. If your form in question requires the user enter 15chars min/max, who cares, the end user is open to the idea that this textbox is a small one that magically doesn’t let me type more than those pre-defined characters.

If your software has a large sentence like “Find a users profile” labels on buttons – guess what I’m going to do, re-label that as “Find..” keep it simple less extraneous cognitive load and more assume the user has used software before they picked up yours.
The Layout. Chances are you’ve probably put together a UI that I can only describe as a DataGrid orgy followed by copious amounts of Modal windows and screens that probably looks like the dashboard of a Qantas Jet in terms of fields/inputs etc. Just for giggles, I’m also likely to find a TreeGrid control because of some random hierarchy based navigational weird mutation of a need (you know who you are, there’s no shame in admitting that)
I’m going to simplify this down to the point where the data flows in a fashion that makes sense to the outcome of the screens purpose. I’m also going to look for ways to make use of a party trick called “progressive disclosure” as you do want the user to feel like they stand a chance at success should they use your software don’t you?

This is what I call the hostage negotiation in that chances are there is an entity in the room that is locked on the way it works at the moment and its my job to find a way to get you to release parts of the UI so I can find a happy resolution to the situation. I’m going to ask you to give me a little control over how the UI comes together and in return I’ll turn the lights back on followed by some pizza. We need to build trust and you got to work with me on this one, I can make good on some promises if you do!
The Validations. I have seen some crazy ways that developers have approached the simplistic concept of alerting the user that they did something wrong. What I have noticed the most is its kind of OnChange vs OnSubmit mode of approach. The reality is validation isn’t that, as you have the “Hey before we show you this form, here’s where you need to focus”, “Hey I just noticed you filled out that field wrong, can you fix it”, “Hey I am about to send this data off and noticed the form isn’t really done yet?” and lastly “hey I know at the time you sent this the form felt like it was good, but the server just called me and told me its wrong, so can you go fix” .. point is, IDataErrorInfo implementation is only going to work so far.
I focus on this area is this is where at times bugs tend to get brought up and it can be a case of where the most effort can be spent trying to undo user fail. Its important that one approaches this in a way that makes sense to the end user and you also find ways to decode the error in a meaningful way – not one that aims to reduce the user to a dribbling mess of “I don’t speak computer geek?”

Validation styling and alert states are crucial.
The BackgroundWorker. Its not about just fixing the UI look and user experience fail points its also about shift the work into areas that make the application feel snappy. In WPF the UI Thread is an absolute pain in the butt when you at times talk to WCF – in that I have seen a lot of apps that keep the entire workload under the one thread only. In Silverlight this can be a fairly low risk situation given Async works ok, but in WPF it means your application grinds to a halt until the service layer comes back from the dead. It also isn’t just a threading issue its also a latency issue as well.
Latency is a buzz killer in making the user feel like the application is responsive, it creates this effect in which the user punishes themselves and attempts to pay their debt by trying again and again etc if left unchecked. Its situations like this I look for ways in making the user aware that they did a good job but at the same time finding ways to NOT remind them of time – as time is the enemy given each millisecond you are banking hate debt with the user?

This is where I look for ways to use some slight of hand techniques to convince the user there isn’t a problem and everything is fast / efficient in the software. I also may lie to the user if I can eg Please wait while Security authenticates you” – damn those Security Nazi’s I agree, it sux but what can you do – its actually an effective way to pacify users as you all collectively shake your fist at IT Department for always riding you about security – when I reality I’m waiting for blah service to wake up from its slumber?

Point is, find a common villain to throw under a bus or find a way to keep peoples attention away from their watch (eg: Now herding llamas for the great stampede …< MAXIS do this in their games, it works)

I’ll leave there as this is turning into a tomb of gospel around how I approach my job, but the point is that I do have a process and there is a method to my madness. I’ve been in a lot of fire drills with WPF/Silverlight and WP7 and I’ve now settled on some patterns that have produced results around nice UI/UX and customers happy.

The reality is this though, you could of saved yourself minimum double through to quadruple the amount of money it cost by bringing me in early instead of late. I can’t say it enough, engage early and upfront you will save, you may be skeptical htats fine, but either way a person like me gets paid – its just a matter of how much?

The rise and fall of Microsoft’s UX platform – Part 4

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Scott Barnes

WPF Time of Death.

Time to call it, December 2nd 2010. Seriously, I have thought about the Silverlight Firestarter event for a few weeks now with a focus on reading how the rest of the world kind of digests the vNext of Silverlight.

Its very clear if you read between the lines that Silverlight is shaping up to replace the WPF workload, and whilst Microsoft will roll out the engineers + shipping routine its pretty much all they aren’t doing before WPF is officially declared dead. Shipping is realistically the one thing they have left and even that’s looking a bit sketchy and cumbersome to watch.

It’s clear with Silverlight5 my old comrades in arms at Redmond have even stopped paying lip service to the x-platform discussion with many of the new features being Windows specific. It’s also clear given Windows Phone 7 failing in the market that now is not the time to give Microsoft’s biggest competitor, Apple momentum or face an internal career firing squad.

WPF has enormous amount of hidden potential, its not marketed but its there. It’s not a bad desktop platform to build against and majority of the issues that I have personally faced with the product are due to basically quality assurance sloppiness. Its still got work-around solutions though, so you in turn forgive it’s sins.

Technically being ok is not enough though, you need to go wide and far in promoting its existence and the return on investment you could potentially yield from the platform. That’s not happening and its also clear that there’s zero paid community evangelism efforts in market right now to uphold this line of thinking.

An example, Where is the WPF fire starter Microsoft? where is any event for that matter that focuses on exploring the bounty of WPF?

Scott Guthrie’s blog is typically a marketing announcement channel given his geek-fame over the years. It’s often we in marketing would joke (sarcasm) “its a good thing we have ScottGu’s blog, as boy we almost needed an official marketing site for Silverlight” – jokes aside, Scott doesn’t talk about WPF at all (check out the below tag cloud)

WPFDead

If i were to audit Microsoft today online and tally up WPF vs. Silverlight, which would win? Argue with the notion that something is dead or isn’t but its definitely clear that WPF hasn’t a bright future as its technology cousin – Silverlight.

Windows Phone 7 – Fail.

I have predicted that I think WP7 is going to not win consumers over but I figured that it would take a couple of years before that is realized. Hearing reports that the device has small units of sale and now some resellers are slashing prices in a hope to stimulate the market to buy, is just downright disappointing.

Its not that the phone is bad, its actually got a load of potential. As whilst I’m a WPF fan at heart, I do still also enjoy working with Silverlight (which has this kind of polarizing effect on me). I just think that the Metro User Interface is simply killing the products potential.

It’s important to call that out, given this is the “face” of the brand. It looks tacky, not well thought out and clearly lacks usability principles needed to navigate a small device. It puts to much emphasis on typography and downplays visual elements to provide structure and grouping to the components within (ie Extraneous Cognitive Load).

The keyboard is to primitive and the keys are narrow. I’ve sat down and looked at the iPhone and Wp7 keyboards and for me the WP7 looks like a prototype version of the concept. The keys don’t necessarily guide you to aim for the middle, where as the iPhone keys are spaced but at the same time the hit area isn’t exactly confined to that space. You in turn are more likely to focus on your target even though the spacing is artificial.

Typography is weak and at times doesn’t even do the basics – in outlook a list of bold means new, unbold means read, yet you still don’t even get this? The menu system is a endless vertical nightmare, as whilst its great to list things its important to also balance out your screen between scrolling and displaying. I find the constant scrolling down to be cumbersome and annoying especially when you’re debugging an Application you’re writing for the phone.

I could list more and I’ll be talking 1:1 with Wp7 Product Management, but i think my point here is made, this phone needs more energy and focus. It has enormous potential ahead of it but for the space price or thereabouts as its biggest 800lb gorilla competitor is simply unrealistic. Lower the price or fix the UI, make a choice as the UX for Microsoft is dying as-is. Which brings me to my next point.

Designers aren’t interested anymore.

If you look at the AppStore market place, majority of the apps are visually engaging and have definitely some design bloodlines in the room. If you look at the Microsoft marketplace its pretty clear that designers aren’t in the room in large quantities.

No designers means wasted technology, wasted technology means some team internally right now is coming up with the “fix” for this (which in their minds is an engineering problem not an engagement problem). The reality is you can throw all the tools you want at this problem as well as the platforms, but unless you truly evangelize in a non-aggressive way to this market. You’re just wasting good money on technology that goes nowhere.

If you were to compare 2007/2008 Evangelism efforts to present, You would see this massive disconnect between strong in your face marketing to the art community to today being a bunch of engineers high fiving one another about how awesome things are. The reality is, unless you can add some design blood lines to this new UX driven world, your technology hasn’t moved forward, you’re just rebadging old technology with much weirder UI.

Summary

Silverlight 5 is WPF’s new replacement, and I really don’t have that much of a problem with this other than if you’re going to make this the vNext desktop focus, then commit. Don’t do it half-assed, get those 200+ engineers and get your butts into gear and open it up more. If you aren’t going to do this, then take 100+ engineers out of that 200 and get them to focus on doing more with WPF so that the two are more aligned to save cross-targeting related issues – as news flash Redmond, nobody really thinks that far ahead as to which technology is likely to give them an outcome they desire. Choosing Silverlight first then hitting a wall and retreating back to WPF is unrealistic as it means people need to know its faults completely end to end and how these map to their business constraints upfront? sorry no.

Windows Phone 7 needs something. It needs a more structured approach to user experience and it needs to solve WPF and Silverlights initial problem – how to get designers to the cause. Unless Microsoft gets off their butts and re-invest into the designer focused communities, these products are destined to follow the same non-starters as previous incarnations of the Windows Phone operating systems as well as the low saturation levels in the wild of both Silverlight/WPF publically.

“There are certainly some functionality shortfalls, and we are going to work to address them,” – Joe Belfiore / Microsoft.

Microsoft needs to get back to evangelism 101 and more importantly the notion that just because you ship doesn’t mean you’re committed to the future. Creating features and releasing them isn’t enough, unless you broadcast and win the hearts & minds over all you’re effectively doing is having a bunch of engineers in Redmond high five one another over a release that could be epic if it got momentum – FAIL.

Windows Phone 7

Windows 7 and 8

Silverlight / WPF.

Azure.

Internet Explorer.

Other.

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Going forward.

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Replace Crew Members.

Reaching Parity.

Put vital organs into Escrow.

Commit and stop being assclowns.

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RE: We speak to customers.

RE: Let’s compromise?

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WPF Time of Death.

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Designers aren’t interested anymore.

Summary

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