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Microsoft MIX10: Day Two

March 18th, 2010

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Web Development

Day two at MIX10 and the information overload continues:

Keynote Highlights:

IE9 and HTML 5

IE9 has true support for HTML 5 including HTML 5 video. Reduced processing capacity required for JavaScript and HTML 5 video. The demo provided was truly amazing. The demo ran on Windows 7. This made me wonder what the performance would be like on older versions of Windows as well as other OS platforms.

Visual Studio 2010

Pretty amazing demo here! A ton of code plug-ins, such as Silverlight. They also took memorization of methods out of the coding equation.  Simply type part of the method and the autosuggest winnows down the list. All this — and more will — make it easier for developers to develop. It kind of made me want to be a developer again. Then I came to my senses.

Change of Heart or Vision?

Seems like there has been a paradigm shift at Microsoft. They are looking at real-life usage and designing and enhancing their products based on their findings, instead of dictating the next movement without regard to actual use.

Nice to see…

OData and Dallas Open Marketplace

Open Data Protocol (OData) and project code name “Dallas” make it simple to push data up to the cloud, using available data, and are a nice step forward for Open Gov project and monetizing data. Wish I could explain it better — might be best to check out the video.

Session Bits:

• BLITZ talked about their collaboration process. Process is formalized internally. There are three steps to the process: Discovery, Brainstorming and Review. The idea is to get all disciplines involved in the ideation process. We pretty much do this on many of our projects.
• The Effective Laws of Good User Experience Session had some key things to remember:
  1. Collaborate – design, technology and marketing
  2. Define Success – list and agree on metrics
  3. Value Good Design – ugliness does not sell
  4. It’s not all about the “Big Idea” – sum of all user experience improvements
  5. You’re probably NOT your end user – 20% of budget should go to user research
  6. Do NOT try to build for everyone – define maximum 3 user types
  7. Gather feedback through conversation – talk to users
  8. Users do NOT know how to build requirements – interpret what users are really asking for
  9. Rigid plans are plans that fail – predictability is unpredictable, you cannot schedule innovation, and scope = product
  10. Every product needs a single vision – collaborate to achieve a common definition of the outcome

Invigorated by the information gained but glad to be getting back on East Coast time.