It’s soon time for yet another product roll out, you’re in the marketing team and faced with a urgent issue – we need example demos to excite the developer base?. Like most other Product Managers you look for the nearest and latest vendor, drop a few hundred thousand in their laps and say the words “Can you make it WoW” and then proceed to wait.

The agency at times will come back with a result that’s either really fantastic or really short on execution – in my exp I’ve noticed more of the later. You then take that said demo, slap on the Microsoft branding on it then send it out into the wild as your own – don’t ask, don’t tell is your response on “how”.

Those of you who kind of know how the behind the scenes works on these kind of things are ok with it, as its part of the machine in which a market gets seeded with the said product. Those of you who look at the new shiny toy on offer are excited and are waiting for the final result. Waiting… waiting…and more waiting but it doesn’t often come.

You probably didn’t get the meme on why end of year reviews come internally come and go which in turn means that all work created in the first fiscal cannot be re-echoed in the second fiscal – so yes, the cool little agency built concept gets thrown out with the previous fiscals trash.

This is how Microsoft markets its products daily ranging from websites, applications through to random programs that are meant to simplify your world into a few bullet points or less.

The reality is this, it gets to a point where you simply just roll your eyes at every new announcement and essentially approach it with an element of contempt or cynicism. To be fair, you’re suffering from the old “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me” effect.

Microsoft really needs to knock it off, its getting somewhat annoying for the customer base. At first I just ignored this overall effect as well I was like many part of the said machine. Now being on the outside of Microsoft and hanging out with the “customers” and “developers” I can see the negative effects it has on the perception of Microsoft today first hand.

I almost want to grab Steve Ballmer and make him sit down in frontline cubicles incognito – like that show where boss’s go undercover in their companies – and get him to see the negative impacts these poorly executed marketing strategies are having.

Disagree? how about this, what if someone were to create a timeline of all the new example apps and promises Microsoft has made in the last 5 years. Then if we were to look at the ones that have sustained beyond a fiscal year, how many do you think would be left?

Microsoft needs to re-focus, re-energize and re-think their current strategies as I think its getting to the point now where there is more noise less signal. I should know as I make a tidy profit right now decoding Microsoft to customers and once they get over the initial shock comes anger then acceptance.

example:

Customer:
“Why didn’t the team do xyz”

Me:
“Because the other team in the org didn’t like it so they had to work around the said team. It’s not an external factor, just an internal political thing”

Customer:
“but i loved it!”

Me:
“Yeah, it was a good idea, anyway..”

Think I’m wrong? ask Microsoft how its going with the design audience discussions? Ask the Windows team what they think of WPF / Silverlight and how HTML5 will play a role? you’ll be quite surprised at the answers of these two questions.

I call this “the shiny object syndrome” (ie once the shine leaves or it gets boring, you’re onto the next one and so on like its seasonal fashion)

Related Posts:

• Silverlight Installation / Preloader Experience – BarnesStyle.
• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Adobe, you lose.
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil
• Windows Mobile 7 the “meh” release.

One of the main focal areas I wanted to fix, was the overall Installation and Preloading Experiences for Silverlight. In that, i think it’s essentially the like the IRAQ war of software (i.e. meaning, its so far embedded now that fixing it is going to take generations of change).

Here is how I’d love to see it change course.

Change the way Silverlight Boostraps.

If you new-up a project within VisualStudio or Expression Blend, you will effectively get an automated boostrapped solution, meaning inside your main Silverlight project via App.xaml.cs for example, you should see something like this:

        private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e)
        {
            this.RootVisual = new MainPage();
        }

What effectively is happening here is that Application Class is the default root for Silverlight and when you inject “MainPage()” into the RootVisual its pretty much the same as if you went:

	UserControl MyUserControl = new UserControl();
	MyUserControl.Content = new MainPage();

What I would love to see firstly is a separate Project called “BootStrapper” created as part of the new-up Project template – that or it prompts you to create one much like it does at the moment with ASP.NET Website (More on that below)

The point is, it draws the developers around the worlds attention to the fact that the Spinning Balls are really bad idea to hand out to public facing websites.

Why are they bad you may ask?

It has to do with the way end users approach your experience and assuming they have Silverlight in place, it’s important that you give the end users some clues as to what they are loading and what is the likely time or more to the point is this going to take forever?

Impatience is a virtue all users have so its going to be very hit or miss depending on what the context of your application expected usage is and lastly the end users broadband connection and tolerance for plug-in experiences in general (I counted like 5 variables of failure that can occur per user when I did some research on this back at Microsoft).

The rotating balls don’t offer much value, there’s nothing to keep you entertained or interested in the experience other than balls rotating and some % of where I’m at.

Soliciting the end users.

Just like a hooker, your job is to entice the person before you to take faith in the hopeful reality that this will be an experience to remember (ok that analogy just took a nose dive in very bad way). Your job is to firstly convince the end user to install Silverlight should it not be in place and secondly and just as importantly your job is to convince the end user that sticking around is also equally important SHOULD they have the installation in place of Silverlight.

You first need to have inside your webpage “You don’t have Silverlight, go get it and here’s what you will get in return” vs the dreaded “Get Silverlight” medallion.

To illustrate this importance; when I was at Microsoft we noticed on Microsoft properties an increase in installation of Silverlight when we actively went out of our way to solicit end users to Install vs the default “Get Silverlight” medallion – information is power, users want power just as much as the next person, power of choice.

Once they jump through that hurdle, you need to again keep their attention on you and try and convince them to avoid the temptation of alt-tabing and twittering etc while they wait – think of all end users as a 3 year old child’s attention span and you will be better positioned for success here.

You need to create a preloading experience that is as helpful and joyful as the intended experience you’ve just spent $thousands of dollars creating (why drop the ball at the last yard! – for you NFL fans)

In this you create something that is part of the theme or take a page out of MAXIS Games where you insert random crap that’s quite funny – example:

“…Initializing launch codes for anti-nuclear attack”

”…Growing Llamas feet so it can walk…”

”…Handing a Monkey a nail gun for entertainment value..”

Keep them informed but not too informed as you want to balance out keeping them informed whilst not making them aware of “time” as that is the enemy, “time”. I’ve even lied once due to a latency hit that I couldn’t avoid, so I put in the initializing splash screen “Checking Security Credentials”  (Given I found end users were more likely to wait for a serious thing like Security to validate vs.. staring at rotating balls of stupidity).

That all aside, this is the “Why” both Preloading/Splash Screens and Install Templates are critical for SIlverlight’s future success as this in turn is what end users judge the technology on (Do i need to bring up the “Skip Intro” debacle of the early 2000’s where Flash Intros were all the rage and bad bad experiences with Flash occurred as a result).

First: Install Templates.

Imagine if you will, you new-up a Silverlight Project. You’re asked obviously what type of project you require and then in the next step it prompts you with the below:

You then choose your Install Template and it can be both an Online or Local template (more on Silverlight Marketplace potential later). Once you select the template, this then will take a vanilla themed experience and injects in into your MySilverlightProject.BooStrapper project. You as a developer and/or designer can then focus on swapping out these assets and messaging to suite your intended experience context for your brand etc (much like the larger brands have done with Silverlight today – e.g. MSNBC etc).

Second: Preloaders/Splash Screens.

Same approach as the Install Templates, except it automatically attaches the intended original Silverlight project you wanted as being the “First” to load (but with enough breadcrumbs in code that you can also swap this out should you choose to).

Once you have gone through these three templates, your solution should have 3 projects in place.

• Project1 – MyProject.Silverlight.BootStrapper

  This project’s job is to handle the preloading of Project2, as in order to preload you first have to have a project that is very small in size for Silverlight to load, then once it’s loaded, Silverlight can then automatically bring down the .XAP file (secondary but main project) in a more controlled and aesthetically pleasing manner.

• Project2 – MyProject.Silverlight

  This is the project you originally intended to use, exact same structure(s) as you have today in Silverlight.

• Project3 – MyProject.Silverlight.WebThis is the project which is in place today in terms of automatically generating the said ASP.NET / HTML project code you need to test with. Except, it also injects a bunch of files/scripts which handle the “Does the end user have Silverlight?” which then based on a Boolean result reacts and produces a prompt that goes beyond the “Get Silverlight” medallion.

The Marketplace.

Ok, you can technically write a VS Template or WPF/WinForms app today do the above without having to bug Microsoft (i’ve started and stopped 3 times – stopping only due to boredom or busy). Why this needs to come from Microsoft is simply put – Marketplace.

We should have a concept where we can buy/sell Themes, Behaviors, Preloaders and Install Templates etc from one another whether it be by cash, XBOX Live Points or whatever currency you want to barter with. Point is, we should foster more of an exchange based community that is more consolidated and branded under a single point of entry for both Silverlight and Expression (say NO to Expression and Silverlight/WPF segregation– designer / developers need to cross-pollinate).

I’d love to see a similar concept as preloaders.net and scalenine.com for the Silverlight community only less fragmented and one that has a much smoother tooling integration experience (I’ll come back and work at Microsoft if need be to make this happen).

Summary.

I’d like to see us as a community leap frog the Flash community in terms of handling these two experiences. As the below illustration highlights the fatigue gates associated with any plug-in experience.

Why leap frog Flash? it’s nothing to do with their community it has to do with “learning from their mistakes” as at the moment Flash folks have figured this out and have a bunch of strategies (whilst fragmented) in place to fix this broken situation. We on the other hand are like the retarded step-child twice removed when it comes to picking up on this, and it erks…ERKS..me (for I am ERKED) to see the rotating splash balls and Get Silverlight Medallion – which incidentally were just a placeholder animations and images that someone forgot to come back and replace.

We fix this we drive Silverlight installation experiences up by minimum 20% per month, I guarantee you that much. As it will lesson majority friction associated with Silverlight and drive a much more deeper awareness of the product amongst consumers who aren’t reading the blogsphere for “What is Silverlight?”

The “What Is Silverlight” is still a question being asked a lot today. It’s one thing to answer that, but it’s another to attach friction to and users experience of the said product once they’ve found a satisfactory answer to that question with bad preloading/installation experiences – OUTSIDE – of Silverlight today.

This is both a Microsoft and Community problem that needs immediate resolution.

Call to Action: Contact Microsoft and hammer away at this issue, get more of a community groundswell behind it so that we can all move forward. I remember inside the team, community reaction was one thing we often would use to trigger emails with one another on why change is important.

Vote here so this can be escalated to the Silverlight Feature planning team! – : http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/4325-silverlight-feature-suggestions/suggestions/632735-silverlight-installation-and-preloader-experience-

Related Posts:

• Microsoft: Stop the shiny object syndrome.
• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Adobe, you lose.
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil
• UX Tip: Just because you can count change, doesn’t make you a mathematician

I’ve been travelling around Australia in the past few weeks talking about Microsoft UX and essentially “What Just Happened”. I’ve uploaded my slides to slideshare.com (though they don’t animate, booo hiss..) but none the less they are there for those who may have attended my presos to look at.

The “What Just Happened” title came from an internal discussion list inside Microsoft, where I would decode movements on Adobe for all of Microsoft to get a better understanding of the PR spin coming from those guys. I’d essentially break it down into less b.s and more to the point information. Given I had a lot of success with this inside Microsoft I thought it would be a great idea to do the same, only not with Adobe but for those in the public regarding Microsoft.

It’s a theme I plan on continueing with in the near future.

Related Posts:

• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Context and Experience Matters.
• Silverlight is creating a mutant designer who can code.
• Microsoft: Stop the shiny object syndrome.
• Adobe, you lose.

Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.

 
1, Who are you? And what is it you do?

Hi, I am Mark Coleran. I am a visual designer who has worked over the years in graphic, motion and interface design. From print work  through to television and film. These days I am working in software development for a small company in Canada, Gridiron Software.

The primary are that I specialized in over the years, has been to design and animate the computer screen displays, that either look like real computers or non real interfaces, on anything from hand held gadgets to huge wall screens in movies.

2. How did you get into the Movie side of things in terms of UX Design?

Completely by accident. I was a graphic designer, and dabbled in 3D. I was working for a special effects company at Pinewood studios, visualizing stunts as 3d animatics. We had a few devices to build that required interfaces on them and it introduced me to the area. They were being built by another group called Useful Companies and I pestered my way into a job with them.

3. Your work is something that is easily considered bleeding edge, the future if you will. How do you even begin to architect the design for this and does the Movie folks brief you on this?

I am not sure it is as bleeding edge as it may at first appear. By the nature of most of the films and the requirements of the interfaces in those films, we do make them look a lot better than they might look if they were a real device. It is a visual medium and your primary task is to tell a small part of the story, sometimes very quickly. For that reason they can be very graphic, more so than real systems and work in very dynamic ways.

The design and architecture tends to come out of those requirements, combined with the requirements from production as far as styling and story telling are concerned.

4. Pablo Picasso reportedly once said “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”, I’m sure many interactive artists around the world have stolen a piece of your idea’s via Movies into real world software? How do you feel about this and does it motivate you?

I have no problem with it at all. Any designer has done this themselves (if they are being honest). If you can provide a small bit of inspiration to someone then that is fantastic thing. We are all influenced by each other and most people don’t ’steal’, they borrow, combine, adapt and craft until they come up with something new. Then I see that and take inspiration (or steal) from it myself. I do object to straight plagiarism. Not so much in what it is itself, but that it is a lost opportunity for someone to do something creative, even if it is heavily inspired.

It does motivate you, to keep at it, knowing that.

5. In the movie “The Island” Sean Bean sits over a table like surface and interacts with it, this was the movies yet Microsoft has surface which is real? Did you see this coming, if not does it freak you out that some of your work has come to real life?

There has been alot of confusion over the table in The Island. Most people have no idea of developmental timelines and the table itself was not a guess at what might be. It was actually production themselves who had said it was going to be a table type screen. There was a guy called John Underkoffler from MIT involved as well working on how people might interact with such a device. No doubt some influences came from the work going on there, including that of people like Jeff Han. I myself when I got involved at the design stage, looked over a massive body of work previously done on these type of devices and desktop. It was a relatively easy process to draw elements together and combine in such a way as to make it look like a realistic device.

There is never anything particularly prescient about most of this faux technology. It is all out there, but just not widespread. I look at what labs and hobbyists are doing in basements. We get to make it up and make it look real a few years before it hits the shops. It is just there for the looking.

It was already real life, but perhaps with a few rougher edges.

6. Following on from that question, where should UX head tomorrow? In that a lot of our interactive models follow some pre-set formulas, what should we do unbalance this further in order to push ourselves harder to do better?

Now there is a question!

As I am now involved heavily in real UX/UI work, so I have developed an intimate and sometimes painful understanding of the area.

If anything I think UX should become as divorced from engineering as possible. Not in the sense of not working with engineering, but that solutions should not be defined by engineering parameters.

It should also become divorced from the systems that it runs on. Why should people learn a system rather than simplify a task they want to do (the original point of computers?)

It should become about creating something that people should never be aware of. Each and every ‘experience’ (I hate that word!) should be a non experience. It seem to have been forgotten that we are building a tool to perform a task and that the task is everything. I don’t have a good experience with my hammer. I just hit a nail with it and a good hammer doesn’t make me think twice about doing that. The tool should be almost invisible in relation to the thing that people are trying to achieve. Simplicity and transparency.

Focusing on the task at hand and nothing else is the key, not a model, pattern or formula. If you try and fit the task to any of those rather than the other way around, you have failed.

There will always be compromises but my guess is that the real progress will come when those compromises are no longer tolerable.

7. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Many different places. Games, film, graphics, engineering, architecture… it is a list that could go on for ever. The key for me has always been to look beyond the project and process that I am currently engaged in.

I also try and engage in other activities that have a certain synergy with what I am doing. In particularly photography. To look, see and compose can teach you a lot that you can employ in other areas.

8. What are some things that irritate you with Software UI today? What are some things that you love in Software UI today?

For the sake of diplomacy, I am not going to name names!

Some of the things I dislike…

Complexity, unnecessary decoration, high contrast, bells and whistles, RTFM, software that makes me feel like an idiot – that blames me for its designers mistakes, imposition, bad metaphors… or just metaphors, implementation models.

Metaphors in particular. A metaphor nearly always feels forced. A real world equivalence that does not always work. There have been great examples of their use in the past but they seem to be regularly over used these days. Stretched almost to breaking.

What do I love… that there is a whole new wave of people creating well crafted simple applications, focused on doing a few things, very well. They are showing a lot of established people better ways of doing things and I hope they get the success they deserve for that. Key elements would be focus, environment, simplicity and context.

I unfortunately can’t put a single mainstream tool that I use on a day to day basis in that second list.

9. I believe that a good UI will invoke an emotional connection that far exceeds function. What is your belief?

I agree and disagree with that. As I stated before, I think that the UI, as well as the UX should be almost invisible in comparison to what people want to do.

The simple fact is that the user is in an environment and that environment has to be a good one. A nice place to be. People spend a lot of time and effort on the physical environment that they live and work in, yet have almost zero control of the one they do the vast majority on their work. It is supremely important that we get that right and make it  good place.

However, that must never become something in itself. Personally I think the creation of an ‘Experience’ is a failing. It must be good as such, but once something becomes an experience rather than just a part of the process, it starts to get in the way of the task and goal at hand.

If we can create something that never gets in the way of what people want to do, without encumbering them and where appropriate helping them, then we will naturally get that connection.

10. If I were able to assemble every single UI/UX Designer/Developer in the world into an area where you could tell them something, what would you say?

Users will rarely ever be designers, but designers always have to be the users. Without an intuitive grasp of the problem you are trying to solve, it will always be a best guess no matter how much you listen to the end user.

More of Mark:

• Mark’s Showreel
• Mark’s blog (http://blog.coleran.com/)
• Mark’s Flickr Page.
• Mark’s twitter username – http://twitter.com/coleran

I have many more interviews like this that I did in 2008 that I’ll publish online. Lee’s inspired me to tackle this area head-on as no matter what brand of tool you opt for tomorrow, interactive design is really about the work guys like Mark produce. It’s the part in a movie where you go “damn that’s freakin nice”.

ILM, Pixar, OOOii etc are all companies I’d leave Microsoft in a heartbeat to work for – as these brands are my main source of muse.

Thank your for you time Mark!

Related Posts:

• FUI – Igniting the Fantasy User Interface spark.
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Despite what some folks in the Adobe community think, I’m actually still a big fan of Flash and what it represents. I do however hold Adobe up to a much higher standard than I did with Microsoft, as for me they have shown endless amounts of potential but have in my opinion squandered through either in-fighting or misalignment with the rest of the industry.

I’ve read a many a post on the “Open Screen Project” and whilst the concept of putting Flash Runtime on multiple devices etc is quite an appealing concept, I just don’t see them pulling it off beyond a few million units here and there. It’s a reality check that I think a lot of the Adobe staff need to take a step back and review.

Putting Flash on the iPhone or vNext desktop device is the easy part and I don’t think a lot of companies are realistically against that idea on it’s own. They would be typically skeptical of the technical dependency when you start too look beyond the “Open” PR spin and start focus on the tooling and ecosystem surrounding it.

Adobe just don’t have the developer numbers to support a sophisticated ecosystem it requires. There are a lot of exceptionally talented programmers in the Adobe community, some of which are fighting well above their weight – these however aren’t the majority. Adobe needs more of a groundswell of developers, ones that typically hail from either .NET, PHP or JAVA as their previous breeding ground. To date, they haven’t yielded that as fast as they should/could.

Adobe have been plagued with getting their community to move from ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 over to ActionScript 3.0 and for the past 2-3 years that’s been a campaign of there’s in motion (i.e. being a little more aggressive in ensuring future roadmaps lock the next generation of ActionScript etc into place, essentially what I call a “duress adoption”). They’ve also recently started picking up on the reality that Microsoft fears daily, PHP has become the 800lb gorilla. There are quite a groundswell of PHP developers out there who don’t typically favor Adobe or Microsoft in a lot of ways and are more than happy to punch out solutions built in a HTML/CSS/JavaScript sandbox.

So why me, someone with little PHP experience? I’ve always felt like evangelism is about growing your developer community and developer relations is about helping the community you have – Ryan Stewart, Adobe Evangelist.

Adobe needs to court these folks and fast, as if they can get these folks to switch gears into the Adobe community lifestyle, they in turn and increase there developer base in a much more significant way than they have in the past by pounding at the Java and/or .NET developer doors.

Assuming they fix the Developer base, they next need to convince OEM manufacturers that their tooling isn’t the liability in this equation. I say that, as whilst its fun and 10x more productive to build Flash based solutions via Adobe specific tooling, this in turn creates effectively a liability in around the concept of being “”Open”. It’s not really Open, its more of a half-hatched Open concept, as producing a SWF outside Adobe tooling is actually not a likely thing to occur in the industry. The reason being is, whilst you can technically make your own SWF, you are still required to fall into line with Adobe’s roadmap and vision of where it all heads.

Implementing software which creates SWF files has always been permitted, on the condition that the resulting files render "error free in the latest publicly available version of Adobe Flash Player." – Wikipedia.com

Point is, that whilst their intentions are righteous and feel open, you have to face reality that this is just shifting the boundaries on a total lock-in and instead of declaring the Runtime and File Format as completely locked, its really the tooling story behind it is where the money tree begins. After all, Adobe aren’t in this business for free, they have shareholders and a $3billion+ fiscal profit expectation to meet.

The tooling component to this equation is really the bottleneck as could you imagine what would happen if say ActionScript 3.0 and Flash were solutions that a Visual Studio .NET developer could write inside the said tooling? It would have a huge impact on both sides of the isle roadmaps that’s for sure.

Related Posts:

• Context and Experience Matters.
• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil
• UX Tip: Just because you can count change, doesn’t make you a mathematician
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Just before I left the Silverlight Team, I managed to convince Laurence to give me an adhoc video interview in my office regarding his latest book titled “Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 3”.

The sound isn’t the best but keep in mind it was done on a Flip Video camera and as I said – adhoc moment just before Laurence moved out of his Tech Evangelist role into a Product Manager role.

I should also point out a few days later our entire building was flooded with water and my office got trashed, omens anyone?

His Book is this one:

Buy it here: Introducing Silverlight 3

Laurence contact details:

• Twitter: @lmoroney
• Website: http://www.destinypress.net/

Related Posts:

• Microsoft: Stop the shiny object syndrome.
• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Adobe, you lose.
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil
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The reason I chuckle is that prior to Microsoft i was laser focused on getting developers to adopt Adobe Flex as we had an abundance of Designers in the Adobe community but less developers. Once I joined Microsoft, I was then focused on getting designers to join the Microsoft ranks as we had an abundance of developers.

Today, nothing really has changed much. As when I was a Product Manager for Silverlight, I think we last announced there was around half a million (there about) Silverlight developers, which for a product that’s roughly 20+ months old, is about 4:1 on Flex Developers give or take. Yet, before we all start whooping and high fiving one another about the success of SIlverlight over Adobe’s products, they would have about 5x as many designers in their ranks compared to Silverlight which would have probably a design audience measured in thousands and not hundreds of thousands.

I’m yet to see any evidence that this stand-off is likely to change radically in the next 2-5 years either, except there seems to be a change in the wind that I was hopeful would happen but skeptical at the same time. It turns out Silverlight is igniting a lot of design passion within the ranks of the Silverlight developer community – meaning, I am seeing some interesting signs of developers wanting to learn “design” albeit also “user experience”.

Can they design though?

Everyone can design, as when you were children you were told to draw a house with clouds, you did so and sure it made your parents happy enough to put it on the family fridge, but is it a realistic house that can withstand the elements such as a sun with eyes?…no.. but you designed. As you began to age towards adulthood for some reason you stopped drawing. The passion in a nutshell, was depreciated from within you.

Designers however kept it alive and continued to learn new techniques and slowly over time mastered ways to explore the concept of design more. That’s why they see things differently in the world than most and can bend your ear on the subject in ways you think they are likely smoking crack.

Today, lets face it, the design audience isn’t exactly pounding down the Microsoft Expression door, this in turn has created a discipline that needs to be filled and as such more and more developers are stepping up to fill it. They will in turn need guidance and better techniques on how to pull off the design part and it will take some time for them to master this art form. In the process I think this will also be a more vibrant unbiased beacon for the design audience to flock towards as in order for the developer audience to fill such a position, they will seek out more designers for help. As the design audience begins to help them, they will in turn also begin the journey of understanding what’s before them and hopefully it will stick.

Thus as Yoda would say:

“the cycle it will, repeat itself it may”.

Point is, at some point we will have a displaced audience that sit between the words design and develop they in turn will be the influencers on why Silverlight should be adopted. Today’s developer is tomorrows designer, so we who consider themselves of the design lineage need to show kindness and patience towards these folks. As they in turn will also show us faster and more efficient techniques to also carry out interactive design.

Next time you hear a developer say “I can’t design” correct them and say “You mean you haven’t the passion to try design” as this is a more correct response.

Related Posts:

• RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.
• Context and Experience Matters.
• Microsoft: Stop the shiny object syndrome.
• Adobe, you lose.
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil

The application came to me yesterday after I watched a few comments on a blog post I posted on InsideRIA.com around Adobe and the recent iPhone announcement. The parts that struck me as being odd, were not so much the opinions expressed by folks on that blog, but it was more along the lines of what they were saying and how they went about saying it. I’ve often found the overall behavior in general around the RIA community very political when it comes to choosing a technology platform to adopt (on both sides of the isle). Its always been a fascination for me, as I’ve been on both sides of the firing lines and have watched in depth how various factions interact with one another.

In light of this morbid curiosity I seem to have, I thought of an idea on what if someone tracked these skirmishes? in that what if someone wrote an Application that essentially keeps score, measures the impact each event has and as well as track the behavioral patterns of the folks who comment etc. This is what EGOSPY is going to do and the chuckle part for me is I’m building this in both Adobe AIR and Silverlight Out of Browser – in case others may want to peak at the data, they can do so but not have their brand-religion impacted (choose your poison if you will).

You can see a sneak peak at the concept in play so far (basically its a still of the console) as i’ve got the base foundation laid for both Adobe AIR and Silverlight codebase + assets. I’m now wiring the various moving parts to it, aka the secret sauce.

I intend to use both Amazon Simple Database and S3 Storage as well as ASP.NET and Windows Communication Foundation as the proxy/filter at times between Amazon and the Client.

http://www.mossyblog.com/lab/prototypes/egospy/

I’ve also drafted a breakdown of the types of personas I’ll be monitoring and looking to validate with some basic home grown research. Feel free to add/subtract your input here:

High Priest/Priestess.
The architects of a brands doctrine and will often be seen at major religious events only. These entities will often command the Priest/Priestess into action in and around how they approach situations that require a response from a brand. They will at times take a passive aggressive approach to competing brands in an open format, all the while providing a behavior model in which they expect to be repeated by Disciples, Priests/Priestess and Fanatics.

Priests/Priestess.
Belong to the secret order of a corporation and their jobs are to ensure all believers of the brand remain so. They will typically enlist and/or encourage Fanatics/Disciples to fight for a particular cause, especially if a brand’s doctrine is challenged openly. They often prefer a swarming effect to an event in the hope of drowning out all chances of the vocal minority from exerting their objections/beliefs around a given doctrine.

Spinsters.
Are specialized fanatics who often follow a strategic transmission pattern to indoctrinate the target group. This may begin with a simple transmission such as a provocative blog post, video medium or an advertisement eluding to imperfection in a competing brands doctrine.

Disciples.
Someone who believes and helps to spread the doctrine of a given Brand. A typical Disciple is pretty locked into the belief system outlined by a given brands priesthood. They rarely deviate from the doctrine and will typically challenge any who argue against it in an open manner. Disciples almost never provoke attacks, and are typically defenders rather than aggressors.

Berserkers. 
These types of people are dangerous. They do not execute restraint and will often attack any who get in their way. They differ from Disciples but only slightly as these types do not favor any one particular brand. They generally are easily irritated by ignorance.

Peacemakers.
These types of people often favor a particular brand, but will often move themselves into position to ensure that hostilities are reduced to a peaceful resolution. They typically don’t outwardly project their brand beliefs onto others and are more inclined to allow others to co-exist within their community haven.

Fanatics.
Extremists who will actively provoke arguments in order to enforce their particular brand belief system on others. They cannot be reasoned with and are typically vocal and approach situations with high amounts of emotion attached. They pride themselves of on being aggressors and will rarely make coherent points and will instead focus on ad hominem attacks etc to shift focus from a given cause.

Apatheists.
Someone who has an indifferent attitude towards a brand and the existence of its Priesthood, Disciples and Fanatics, not really caring one way or the other about brand issues. As a general rule, this lack of interest is motivated by a disinterest in Brand but are more focused on what the Brand produces.

Skulking Ninjas
Someone who is obviously a fake alias, but has suspicions of being part of the Priesthood, Disciples, Fanatics or Spinsters. Typically these people often are part of the Priesthood or Disciples but can’t show their true identity for fear of open reprisals and/or are looking to defect from the doctrine but can’t due to severe penalty clauses. At times these folks are personal, and are there not to debate or interact on a given topic, but are purely motivated by an absolute hatred regarding a particular person.

Phantoms
The ghost who talks, typically someone who is obviously a fake alias as well (much like the Skulking Ninja), difference however is they are consistent in their alias and often will talk about a given topic/brand without ever being identified. They are a secondary identity attached to someone who either prefers to remain anonymous or can’t reveal their identity due to the possibility of either criminal charges, political retribution or career limitations imposed. They thing about these entities are that whilst they are essentially a lie, they often speak raw open and transparent truth majority of the time – given they have no fear.

The concept behind EGOSPY was inspired by this discussion via TED. As i often think that in part the social impact that the above personas have is in many ways part of a kind of brand focused censorship – aka brand dictatorship.

An example of the GUI.

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