Dennis Vroegop

A forgotten audience?

2013-03-26T18:58:4701:00:00

Earlier this week I had an appointment at the Dutch Microsoft office to talk about people with disabilities and Apps. (You'll have to forgive me: I am Dutch and we don't care that much about being politically 100% correct; we'd rather get our point across than thinking hours and hours about the right term for a person with challenging visibility abilities: we call them blind people, so I will do that here as well. Not being insensitive, I'm just being Dutch).

I have to be honest. Although I work a lot on software for people with autism, I hardly ever think about making software for people who can't are almost can't see the screens. Or who can't hear a thing. Or who have no hands to make those nice gestures with.

But, I was told that a staggering large amount of people "suffer" from such conditions. Soon during the discussion the question arose: why aren't we all paying attention to this group? Are these people less likely to buy or apps? Or is it just not economically worthwhile to redesign your app so this group will also spend their hard earned money on the developers who built the app? For me, the answer is simple yet still embarrassing: I just don't think about that group. Later in the discussion it turned out how stupid that attitude I have is: I have a very mild form of colorblindness, something that I hardly even notice but that sometimes is a bit annoying when using apps that rely on recognizing colors. Yet I never even think about designing apps for people with disabilities (another disclaimer: I am not saying not being able to distinguish between similar shades of yellow and green is comparable to not having hands (disclaimer in a disclaimer: I CAN see the difference between every color very well, as long as they are written down in their hexadecimal RGB notation)).

The discussion that followed had me thinking. How would one make an app that is suitable for a blind person? Screen readers worked fine in the old days of command line applications. Some websites are optimized for screen readers as well. But how do blind people operate an iPad? Or a smart phone? I find the absence of not having tactile feedback (i.e. not feeling keys) on those devices a huge drawback: it means I have to look at what I am doing. Now, I have that choice: a blind person doesn't.

What can we do to help people who have limited abilities? How can we make software smarter so that everybody has access to the information they need? I have some ideas and I invite you to come up with some ideas as well. Please leave them in the comments and we can make this world a bit more accessible.

Oh, and if you're in the Netherlands around Saturday April 6^th / Sunday April 7^th I invite you to come to http://www.devcamp.nl and we can try out some of the ideas we might have. It will be fun, I promise you that.

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Search charm

2013-03-26T12:16:3001:00:00

Now, I am confused. One the rules of Windows Store Apps is that you make extensive use of the available charms. This means you do not add a "Share to FaceBook" button to your app, you don't add a "Print" button to your app and so on. Why? The reason is simple: there are charms available for this and the users know what they are and how to use them. So your app should adhere to this.

Now, we all know that some of the apps that Microsoft itself provides do not follow the guidelines themselves. I always thought that the reason for this was that those apps were designed or even written before the rules were written down. And then, earlier today, I got an update for the Mail app. To my surprise, I saw this:

Yes, indeed. A search button. To search your mail. If you press it, it will take you to the search charm, but why did they include that button here? This violates the rules. And they don't have the excuse of having written this prior to the rules: this is a new addition.

I am puzzled and a little bit angry: if we want the platform to succeed we need to have a consisted user experience and this hurts that.

The magic of touch

2013-02-20T07:31:2401:00:00

Tell me something. Why do people love the iPad but fail to recognize Microsoft was the first one out there with a touch device? Why do people stand in line for an iPhone while there are other better offerings out there? Why do people spend an enormous amount of money on stuff when there are other, better and cheaper solutions available? The answer is: because it makes them feel good.

It's as simple as that. It makes them feel good. The product they're using gives them something that goes beyond the specs on the box of it. When you sit in a coffeeshop (no, not the Amsterdam kind) with an iPad you're sending out a signal. Or at least: you think you're sending out a signal and that is what it is all about: you are feeling special and that is worth buying that device.

Now, I am not saying here the iPad is a bad device. It isn't. It's pretty good. But, time has caught up and at this time of writing they are not the best choice when it comes to tablets. What is the best choice? Well, that depends on what you want to do with it. I currently own two different Surface tablets. One is the RT version which is brilliant because the battery lasts all day, I can use Word and OneNote so I can do some work on it and I can do pretty all the thing my wife does on her iPad. I also have the Surface Pro which is brilliant because the form factor is small enough to carry around but I can still do development on it. The iPad my wife has is brilliant because she can use it to play all those games she loves so much, games that are not available on my machines (and that suits me fine). My daughter will get a Nexus. Why? It's cheap and it does what she needs it for, therefor it's brilliant.

As you can see I think all those devices are brilliant, but only if you use them what they're good at. You could technically use the iPad to develop a full blown game in HTML5, JavaScript and CSS but why on earth would you want to do that? The tools that make development such a nice experience aren't available on it. Use the Surface for that: it runs Visual Studio! On the other hand, if you want to do some gaming or some simple note taking, why not use the iPad? It's conveniently small and there are tons of apps available, so you will probably find the perfect note taker app that fits your style.

But… I believe people don't think about these sort of things when they decide where to spend their money on. I think it works the other way around: they buy a device and then find the apps for it to justify their purchase. I believe psychologists call it 'cognitive dissonance' which means as much as finding reasoning to justify your actions.

So, why do people by that device? Or even: why do people decide on a certain brand in clothing or any other area? Well, I'll repeat what I said: because it makes them feel good.

If you're writing apps for a tablet you should take that into account. Make sure your application appeals to your user on a certain level. Make sure that when they work with your system they get a sense of achievement, a sense of being special because they use that app. You could do that by having a first class UI with fantastic graphics, so they feel emerged in your world. You can do that by making them member of some elite club. You can do that in all sorts of ways, but no matter how you do it, make your app appeal to the user.

If you do that, you'll create some loyal followers of your 'brand'. Make sure your apps are recognizable and that people feel at home using them. If that means having a weird color scheme than that's ok. Just make sure it's something that sticks and comes back everywhere they look.

Another way to accomplish that is to make sure the user is emerged in your app. Good games tend to make people forget they're playing games at all. Good apps do that as well: they are all about the goal you're trying to achieve and not so much about how to achieve that. The app shouldn't get in the way. If you manage to do that you'll find people feel at ease in your app and will give it a good rating in the stores. They will come back to it and are more likely to choose your brand again next time they are looking for an app. Make people forget they're working with a phone or a tablet and let them do whatever it is they need to do.

Make the whole experience a magical one, one that makes the user feel special. So in order to become more visible you need to make sure the user falls in love with your brand. Once you've done that, you can almost get away with anything. Your users will become a loyal fan base. And that is the way to success.

Developer training, where to go?

2013-02-20T02:56:2501:00:00

Quite often people come to me and ask me: how do you manage to keep up with what's going on in your field? Whenever this happens my first reaction is always (in my head) "so, they do believe I keep up with my field?" Of course, I do keep up. It's not something I set out to do but it comes naturally. Ever since I started programming back in the early 80's of the previous century I have been reading a lot about my trade, talking with other people and generally be interested in what was going on in the art of programming.

Now, there is one prerequisite if you want to do this: love you work. Really, really adore it to bits. Love it so much that when you win the big lottery tomorrow, you'll find yourself behind a keyboard and a compiler the day after that (Ok, you might want to take a vacation and switch jobs just to get away from that annoying colleague but you get the idea). If you don't then it's pretty easy to stay up.

Convince your boss you need training.
Go to some training company, sit back for a couple of days and come back with a nice certificate, feeling all relaxed.

Will you actually have learned something? No. But you had a good time and your boss is happy that you've been pro-active. Now, stop reading and do something else.

For all the others out there, you will know this is not enough. Of course being away from the office and sit in a classroom all week, diving deep into a subject is a great way to learn. You are surrounded with your peers, people you can ask questions or that ask you those questions (the best way to learn is to teach). However, if you are a bit like me, this isn't going to satisfy you. There are so many things you want to know about, including that rare new framework you've always wanted to know about and that nifty new language feature you don't quite understand. Chances are there is no course for this kind of thing. And even if there was, there is no way your boss is allowing you to go on training 50 weeks a year. And that's what you'd need if you wanted to know everything you're interested in.

So what are your options? To be honest, I don't really know. My mind works a bit strange. If I am interested in something I pick it up very, very easily. I am just like a sponge when it comes to stuff I care about. If I don't really care about it, my mind shuts down and refuses to learn. That's why I am fluent in English and can't speak a word of German: during high school I had a teacher I quite liked who taught English and a teacher I really disliked that taught German. No matter how hard I tried and how hard I decided to really do my best and learn German, I just couldn't do it. English? I never really paid attention and never did any homework and graduated with straight A's for that subject.

So when it comes to technology I found I do the same thing. When I attend conferences I almost never go to sessions. If the session is about something I care about chances are I already know it or I will pick it up by talking to people who went to that session. If it's not something I am interested in there's no point for me to go there since I won't pick it up anyway.

Therefor I am unable to tell you how to learn stuff you don't care about. I wish I knew how to do that, I still want to learn German (but not really…) however I did find out what I do to learn things. And I gladly share that with you.

Read about the technology. Just block a couple of hours in your agenda, sit behind a computer, start up your favorite search engine and look for information. Don't read it all and don't study it all, chances are articles will contradict each other. But do get a general feeling of what it's all about.
Do it. Start up your development environment, start a new project and use that technology. It helps if you have a goal, an actual program you want to write. If you have that chances of finishing it and actually using that new technique are much, much higher. Be prepared to spend more time on it than you anticipated: you're not proficient enough in that new stuff you're learning, so it will take considerably more time than you might expect.
Go back to the search engine and compare your experiences with the ones of others. See if what you did holds up.
Talk to people who have worked with the technology. If possible at this stage: avoid the experts. They are so far ahead of you everything you've done will feel stupid. Don't fall into that trap: the experts have done the same trajectory and now pretend to have forgotten all about it.
Write an article, blog post, or do a presentation. Even if you don't publish, this helps in organizing your thoughts around the subject. And if you do publish, you'll probably be seen as the expert on that field, which leads to more chances to work with the new technology and therefor make you even better at it.
Take an online course. There are some very good online training companies that teach you the stuff you want to know in your own time. If you are a bit like me you don't mind doing this in your own free time. It's fun! I especially recommend Pluralsight. I do not have any ties to them but they offer a huge amount of training on a lot of different subjects (although it seems to center a bit around Microsoft technology which is fine by me). Really, really good stuff is to be found there.
Work with it. Make the technology yours.
Start looking for the next challenge.

And of course the last part is the most important: you're never done with learning. But isn't that what makes this job so great?

Microsoft Surface Pro

2013-02-20T02:12:3801:00:00

I admit it. I am one lucky guy. Figure this: Microsoft just came out with the Surface Pro, a nice machine that has caught the imagination of a lot of people. Still, since the other Surface (the RT version) didn't really sell that well, I guess Microsoft decided to make not so much of the much more expensive Pro version. What they failed to understand is that one of the reasons the RT didn't sell so good was that a lot of people were waiting for the Pro version to come out. And when it came, it sold out. Fast. And then new deliveries were made to the stores. Those sold out again. And so on. And then in Bellevue the MVP summit took place. Imagine over 2000 Microsoft fans swarming the local Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square, all wanting to get one of those nifty new machines. I guess you can imagine what that must have been like. A chaos. Some people were going into these stores every day just to be disappointed: "No sir, we don't have the 128GB model available. Try again tomorrow."

I wanted one as well. I was in need for a new machine to do my development on (my Surface RT is a great machine and I love it dearly but it doesn't run Visual Studio). I hold out until the MVP summit so I could get my hands on the desired piece of hardware. And of course, the moment I heard about the run on the machines I was pretty disappointed. And then, on Tuesday, I had a hole in my schedule so I decided to walk to the store just to see them up close and personal. I was even toying with the idea of getting the 64GB version (there were rumors some of these machines might be available, if you were lucky) although I knew 65GB wouldn't be enough to do some decent development on.

I walked in the store, played with the wonderful devices there (the new Sonys, Asus and Acer devices are magnificent, and much better looking than anything that Apple has ever made!) and then this sales guy was walking up to me. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do for me. Well, I told him that what I really wanted was a Surface 128GB. He then said "Well, then you must be the luckiest man around Bellevue today: we've got one left in the back. You want it?" I didn't really have to think about this. He said "Well, if you want anything else, like a keyboard or a sleeve or something like that, please go and help yourself. I have to run to the storage room now before someone else takes it." And with that he actually started to run towards the back of the store.

I picked up a black sleeve and a black type keyboard (my RT has a red sleeve and a red keyboard) and waited for him to come back, anticipating a sad look on his face as he told me his colleague got to it first. It took Kris (as that was his name) forever to return. But when he did he held in his hand a nice black box.

Well, to make a long story short: I did get it. So now I am the owner of 2 fantastic devices. Each has its pros and cons of course, something I will outline in another post. But for now I am happy with my extended family of Surface devices. (And yes, this posting is written on that devices itself).

MVP Summit 2013, Part II

2013-01-18T11:41:0901:00:00

So you read my post, talked your boss into letting you go for a week and booked the flight to Seattle. You have found a hotel through the Summit Website and reserved a room there. You had the option of sharing a room with another MVP (in which case Microsoft picks up the bill for the room) or you wanted some privacy during the night and decided to pay half the room price yourself in exchange for a private room.

Most of the activities around the Summit take place in either Redmond on the Microsoft grounds, or in Bellevue. Bellevue isn't that big so it really doesn't matter much which hotel you booked. Most of the hotels are pretty close to one another and you can easily walk from one hotel to the other. No issues there, pick the one that fits your budget, your travel plans and which one you like best. Trust me: you won't be in your room much….

You will be busy. Really, you will be. Next to the product group sessions there are all sorts of activities going on. Microsoft hosts a party every year, there are product group dinners (where you can socialize with your fellow MVP's and team members), there are usually country drinks with people from the same region, there is a welcome reception, and so on. Next to that are the other parties. Famous is the Party With Palermo, organised by Jeffrey Palermo. It's just a get-together but it is getting bigger every single year. Most venders host an evening or a lunch session, just talk to your representative if they plan on hosting something. There are MVP-organized sessions: not official but interesting nonetheless.

Just follow the lists, the emails you get from your MVP lead and the private forums. You'll find tons of information about what's going on besides the more serious stuff. Myself, I am always busy during this week and never have a moment where I can relax. It's a good thing it's a 10 hour flight home so I can catch up on some sleep!

MVP Summit 2013, part I

2013-01-17T20:23:1601:00:00

For those of my readers who are not a Microsoft MVP: this post (first in a serie) is not for you.

In February 2013 Microsoft will once again its annual MVP Summit. A gathering in Bellevue and Redmond, a place for MVP's to meet up with each other, the product teams, the people behind the MVP program and others in one way or another connected to Microsoft. If you are an MVP and you have the chance to go, you definitely should. For me personally, the yearly summit is one of the highlights of my professional year.

I was honored to have received the Hardware Interaction Design and Development MVP award. This is a very, very small group of less than 10 people (compared with for instance the C# Awardees group who are with more than 300). Since each product group has the responsibility to host their own MVP's it can be hard for smaller groups such as the one I belong to to have dedicated content. The MVP Award group has made that very clear: on the Summit site you can find all the details about which groups have dedicated content, which have some dedicated content and which have none at all. My group has none. But that doesn't mean it would be pointless for me to go: I am "allowed" to visit sessions from my old group (C#) and attend those meetings. And of course: I still have the chance to meet up with my fellow hi-dad MVP's, the teammembers from Microsoft and other people I know in that area.

The sessions are usually under Non Disclosure Agreement. They do guard this pretty well: although I have signed my NDA I am not allowed to walk into a, let's say, Windows vNext session. I wouldn't even know where such a session would be. I have to stay close to the product groups I am allowed to visit. Of course, chances are pretty big they will tell me stuff I cannot repeat outside the sessions room: what happens in Redmond, stays in Redmond!

Is it worth it? Well, even though there is no dedicated content for my expertise I am still very much looking forward to the summit. I get to meet with my peers, I can attend highly secret NDA sessions about technology that is close to my heart and I can see and hear at first-hand what we can expect in my field the coming year. Am I going? You bet I am!

Next time I will give you some pointers about some things you need to know before the summit.

Windows 8, the biggest struggle….

2012-11-20T09:57:5601:00:00

As always, it’s hard to be original. It’s easy to copy great stuff others have done but to think of something nice that others might have done is not trivial.

The number of applications in the Windows 8 Store is growing rappidly. That was to be expected; a lot of developers already have the skills needed to build Win8 apps so all it took was some ideas. And they have ideas.

Another factor that helps with the growing number of apps in the store is the availability of the project templates in Visual Studio 2012. When you start a new project you are given a ready to run sample that you can adapt to your needs. All the stuff needed to navigate through the app, to display data, to do semantic zoom, it’s all available.

So what do we do? We tweak, change, adapt and modify these samples to fit our application. However, the underlying structure of the app remains the same. Somehow developers can’t seem to break free from the structure that the sample apps give you. Result: all apps looks alike.

My tip for the day: take the samples and use them to learn. Don’t use them as a foundation of your app. Make you app different from those others and you’ll find you will have something special.

I’m curious to see what you come up with!

Blogging from Office RT

2012-11-15T16:11:1201:00:00

During the last Build conference all attendees were given a brand new sparkling exciting Surface RT device (I love that machine despite its name but that's beside the point). On it came a version of Office 2013 RT, or better: the preview version.

Now, I translated that term "Preview" to "Beta". Which is OK, since I've been using a lot of beta products from Microsoft and they all were great.

And then I wanted to post a blogposting from Word. I knew I could, I have been doing this for a long time (I prefer Live Writer but that isn't available on Windows 8 RT). So I wrote the entry and hit "Publish". Instead of my blogsite I got a nice non-descriptive error telling me I couldn't post. So I fired up my other (Intel based) Win8 tablet, opened Word RT Preview, it loaded my blogpost (you've got to love the automatic synchronization through Skydrive) and tried from that machine. Same error.

So, I installed Live Writer (remember, the other machine is Intel based) and posted from there. That worked like a charm.

Apparently, there was something wrong with Word. I gave up and didn't think about it anymore.

Yet… what you're reading now is written in Word 2013 RT on my Surface RT. So what did do? Simple: I updated from the Preview version to the final version. That's all there was to it.

So…. If you're still on the preview I urge you to upgrade. You need to go to the "classic desktop update" window instead of going through the Windows Store App style update since Office is a desktop system, but once you do that you'll have the full version as well.

Happy blogging!

Where’s my start button?

2012-11-07T14:58:0001:00:00

I have to be honest here for a moment. The one thing people most complain about when they talk about Windows 8 is that they miss the Start Button. You know, that dreaded thing that everybody hated when it was introduced…

I usually don’t go into these kinds of discussions unless I am personally involved but this one I cannot let go. Why are people doing this? Windows 8 is a great OS. They have changed, updated and perfected so many things so there is enough to talk or write about. Yet, all articles or discussions come down to “Where’s my start button?”

In order to save myself from having to explain this every single time I wrote this post and from now on I will simply refer to this blog when I get asked that question.

Here it is.

Your start menu is there. It’s right in front of your nose. It’s two dimensional, it’s got huge buttons (although they are more than just buttons, they’re alive and therefore called Live Tiles). Just go through those tiles and click what ever you want to start up. Don’t want to look for an item? Just start typing. Really it is that simple. When you are on the start screen just start typing (part of) the name of the program you want and you’ll find it.

As you see in the attached example I started typing “word” and it found Word, Wordfeud, Wordament etc. If you want to find something else besides a program (say you want to change the region you’re in) just click on Settings (it will already show you how many hits there are in that section).

People, my request is: dive into something before you complain about it. Look around. This feature is so much easier to use than the old stuff. But you have to know about it.

So.

I won’t get into this discussion anymore.