Canadian UX Blog

Announcing Expression Studio 4!

Paul Laberge — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:29:55 GMT

I remember the days when Microsoft had announced they were introducing a set of design tools to help customers and partners build .NET-based solutions that were both visually appealing and focused on user experience. In those early days, we introduced the tools with enigmatic yet interesting codenames like Sparkle (which became Expression Blend), Acrylic (Expression Design) and Quartz (Expression Web). The journey that these early beta tools took has been an interesting one and I have enjoyed watching the product evolve into a very focused set of products that allow both designers and developers build truly awesome software experiences.

Since Expression Studio’s big launch at our MIX conference in May of 2007, we’ve seen a lot of amazing software experiences built with these tools. Examples include large businesses using Expression Studio like the Online Video Player for CTVOlympics.ca, Hard Rock Café’s Memorabilia and The Weather Network’s WeatherEye, to small businesses like Pink and Yellow Media building sites like Design Schooled Kids.

That journey continues today; we are excited to launch Expression Studio 4. This version launch represents some significant additions to the tools in our design suite and some great enhancements to features that have become not only popular with designers and developers, but in many ways essential to their work.

What’s in Expression Studio 4?

If you have never used Expression Studio before but you are interested in creating innovative user experiences via software (web, desktop, smartphone or otherwise), then this product is one that you’ll likely want to know more about. In a nutshell, these tools were built to provide you with professional-grade design capabilities in intuitive user interfaces. In other words, if you can think up an amazing software experience in your head, these tools can help you make it a reality.

Expression Studio is a suite of four design tools meant to provide designers and developers a platform to build great software experiences

You can find more information about Expression Studio 4 on our product website. You can also check out our Expression Studio Community Site for tips and tricks from the pros!

What’s New in Expression Studio 4?

Well, in a nutshell, we’ve added and refined a lot of things in the suite, but some of the more popular changes and additions are detailed below:

SketchFlow – a more streamlined workflow with your clients

Publish to SharePoint provides an easy way to share your prototypes and also enhances their feedback mechanism, as before you can view client’s feedback in context on the design surface within Expression Blend and in addition clients can now view shared feedback when they review prototypes via the SketchFlow player.

Behaviors – accelerate your UI designs

Expression Blend 4 includes new Behaviors designed to enhance your application design process; multi-touch, the ability to preserve screen state from screen to screen, easily drag-able items between listboxes plus many more designed to keep you focused on the art of creating compelling UI designs.

Visual State Manager – bring you application to life one transition at a time

Bring your application to life with effective transitions. Add subtlety and texture to your UIs by taking advantage of the new pixel shader effects. Whether you want to manipulate color, add a drop shadow or animate a ripple transition or swirls, the extensible range of pixel effects gives you total control so you can create the transition you want through the Visual State Manager.

Team Foundation Server Integration

Share your Expression Studio project files with those of your colleagues by using check in and check out functionality with Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration. The feedback you receive via SketchFlow can now be converted into Team Foundation Server work items.

SEO Diagnostics

Expression Web uses the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit to improve your Web site’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make the site content more search engine-friendly.

Create Expression Web add-ins

Now you can extend Expression Web’s functionality with HTML and JavaScript. Add panels, menu commands, and tools to the toolbox. And share your add-ins with the Expression Community.

SuperPreview for Macintosh Safari

Expression Web now supports Macintosh Safari for browser compatibility testing with SuperPreview. Having personally talked to web designers both on Windows and other platforms, the overwhelming consensus is that this tool is a game changer for them in ensuring browser rendering problems are caught well ahead of going live with a site. (A quick hint: if you just want to test your site for rendering issues between IE6, IE8 and IE8 Compatibility Mode – aka: IE7, then there is a free version of Superview that you can download here. You’re welcome. :) )

Support for Windows Phone 7

Build great mobile applications for the Windows Phone 7 platform using Expression Blend and Silverlight.

Are you building great experiences with Expression Studio today?

If you are building a great software experience with Expression Studio today and would like to share with us what you’ve built, drop us a line! We would love to hear from you!

-Paul

The “Ignite Your Venture” Webcast Series

Paul Laberge — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:41:00 GMT

Do you have a great business idea but don’t know where to start? Do you have questions about the process of creating a start-up business but never knew who to ask/ Just curious what the big deal is with the start-up side of technology?? We are proud to introduce a free, new webcast series called Ignite Your Venture that aims to help you understand the in’s and out’s of the start-up process and give you a forum to ask people with expertise in the start-up ecosystem.

Hosted by Microsoft’s very own Angie Lim, Channel Audience Manager for the Microsoft Canada Partner Network and featuring the experts at Intrepid Equity and others, the intent is to bring discuss topics that entrepreneurs often ask and to help provide insight into all things start-up.

The webcasts will run every Wednesday of April 2010 (see the list of webcasts below for details) and registration is free. We look forward to seeing you on these webcasts!

Webcast #1 – Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Bring Your Ideas to Life with a Venture Capitalist

Venture capital plays a key part in enabling entrepreneurs to help accelerate their businesses. At the same time, raising funds can be a laborious and intimidating task. In this session, you will gain insight into the capabilities and approaches that venture capitalists value the most. You will learn how to prepare a comprehensive growth plan, and how to approach and engage diverse sources of finance. You will hear a variety of views from key business leaders on how to best help you get the outcome you deserve – the funding you need and an ecosystem of support to help you make the most of it.

Featured Presenters:

Angie Lim, Channel Audience Manager, Microsoft Canada Partner Network
Alkarim Jivraj, Founder, Intrepid Equity Finance
Ian Gilbert, Venture Partner, Intrepid Business Acceleration Fund LP

Webcast #2 – Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Finding the Right People to Make the Right Team with Randy Street

In business, you are who you hire. Randy Street, co-author of "Who: The A Method for Hiring", a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best seller, offers a ground-breaking solution to your #1 business problem - hiring mistakes. In this webinar you will discover a simple 4-step method for hiring the right people that has helped its practitioners to achieve a 90% success rate, gain insights from exclusive interviews with more than 20 billionaires, 60 CEOs, numerous investors, and other thought leaders on the subject of hiring, and also learn the secrets of success for over 300 CEOs who participated in a University of Chicago study.

Featured Presenters:

Angie Lim, Channel Audience Manager, Microsoft Canada Partner Network
Randy Street, President, ghSmart
Alkarim Jivraj, Founder, Intrepid Equity Finance
Ian Gilbert, Venture Partner, Intrepid Business Acceleration Fund LP

Webcast #3 – Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Helping to Increase Profits with Focus on Channel Engagement & Helping to Accelerate Your Sales

Channel selection, deployment and execution represent a strategic minefield for many companies. This session will focus attention on the critical components of an effective channel engagement strategy. You will learn approaches that help you make the most of every dollar you spend in accessing and engaging customers. You will gain insight into effective methods for assessing which channels to use, and how best to use them. You will hear views from experienced entrepreneurs and channel builders about the most effective ways to drive deal velocity and scale – helping to contribute to the accelerated growth of your business.

Featured Presenters:

Angie Lim, Channel Audience Manager, Microsoft Canada Partner Network
Shane Davies, ISV Partner Manager, Microsoft Canada
Alkarim Jivraj, Founder, Intrepid Equity Finance
Ian Gilbert, Venture Partner, Intrepid Business Acceleration Fund LP

Webcast #4 – Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Business Lead Generation that Really Delivers

Generating and effectively managing leads, especially when resources are scarce, can be a real business roadblock. In this session, you will learn how to establish a strategic lead generation and management process that accelerates performance and that utilizes resources effectively, particularly in an entrepreneurial environment. You will also discover how to measure the real effectiveness of your lead generation efforts – so that you can ensure every dollar you spend contributes to revenue creation.

Featured Presenters:

Angie Lim, Channel Audience Manager, Microsoft Canada Partner Network
Cadman Chui, Marketing Executive and Entrepreneur
Alkarim Jivraj, Founder, Intrepid Equity Finance
Ian Gilbert, Venture Partner, Intrepid Business Acceleration Fund LP

-Paul

Oh yeah, it’s on: welcome to the party, Windows Phone 7 Series.

Paul Laberge — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:41:35 GMT

Today marks a sea change in Microsoft’s mobile device strategy and how we are going to market in the smartphone space. This change is fundamental rather than incremental; we have completely re-written the book on how a Windows Phone looks, behaves and interacts with a user. With the MIX10 opening keynote (you can watch the on-demand video here), we introduced the details on how designers and developers can create incredible and immersive solutions for Windows Phone 7 Series.

I don’t think I can stress how different this new offering is to not only our previous smartphone offerings, but also how different Windows Phone 7 Series is compared to the most popular smartphone competitors on the market today. In making the user central to the experience, the Windows Phone 7 Series product team has created a product that is productive, focused and fun to use.

Some of the things we have announced are:

A consistent experience across devices
- All Windows Phone 7 Series devices will share a common screen resolution and hardware specifications
An intuitive, delightful and fresh User Interface
- Adoption of the code name “Metro” user interface which was derived from the highly acclaimed UI in the Zune HD media player
- Tiles: launch points for phone functionality on the home screen that also share contextual and relevant information important to the user
4-point capacitive multi-touch screens
An application programming model that uses Silverlight and XNA to deliver outstanding application and mobile gaming user experiences
Free tools to build Windows Phone 7 Series applications, including a very powerful phone emulator
Harmonized user experiences by leveraging Silverlight, Zune media playback, social networking and XBox Live integration
A push notification engine allowing simulated multitasking while removing the overhead of multitasking resources (such as memory, disk space, etc.)

The fact that the application model leverages Silverlight and XNA is significant in that you can reuse your skillsets that you have acquired building regular Silverlight apps and XNA-enabled games. This means that if you have built Silverlight applications or XNA games in the past, you’ll find the application creation process very familiar and will allow you to hit the ground running.

Below are some helpful resource links that you can use to learn more about Windows Phone 7 Series application development and actually start building your apps right now:

Main Portal for developing Windows Phone 7 Series applications
Get the free development tools for Windows Phone 7 Series
Development Documentation
Official Blog of the Windows Phone 7 Series Development Team
The Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Training Kit
Channel9’s Training Courses on Windows Phone 7 Series

Happy Windows Phone 7 Series app building!

-Paul

Technorati Tags: Windows Phone 7 Series,Silverlight,XNA,MIX10

Have you heard of Expression Web?

Paul Laberge — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:22:24 GMT

Are you a website designer or developer either as a profession or even as a hobby? If you are, then you may want to attend a free webcast coming up on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 2PM ET (11AM PT) where we overview the features of Expression Web 3, Microsoft’s latest website design tool.

To sign up for this free webcast, click here and use the following sign-up code: 10BC45

This overview session will highlight some of the great features of Expression Web. By the end of this session, you will:

Understand how Expression Web 3 fits into the Designer/Developer workflow for building web experiences
See a tour of some of the most important features of Expression Web 3, including

The Web Editor
CSS Management tools
Web Standards Management
Language Support (including native support for PHP!)
SuperPreview

If you’ve never heard of Expression Web, then this webcast will likely surprise you as this a fully professional tool to help you build visually appealing, dynamic and standards-adhering websites. And to answer your question, no, this is not FrontPage vNext. FrontPage (thankfully!) is dead, never to come back.

To give you an example of what is possible with the tool, Morten Rand-Hendriksen has built some great sites built using Expression Web 3 which warrant highlighting:

-Paul

Wait, that’s a Windows Phone?!?

Paul Laberge — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:27:00 GMT

Yesterday was a pretty big day for Microsoft and one that I had been anticipating for a long while. At the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, we finally unveiled to the world what our next generation of Windows Phones will look and act like – we introduced the Windows Phone 7 Series mobile operating system (watch the announcement here). This introduction represents a truly radical change in Microsoft’s mobile strategy and already it has been garnering very positive feedback from the public (read Engadget’s review here; my initial search on the Twitter tag #wp7s is extremely positive as well). You can expect smart devices featuring Windows Phone 7 Series in time for the 2010 Holiday season.

Background

Over the past months (and even years!), Microsoft’s mobile strategy has been questioned and blasted as being yesterday’s news, with very little to bring to the table in today’s highly competitive mobility market. In complete honesty, I really can’t disagree with a lot of the criticism. While I am enjoying Windows Mobile 6.5 on my Samsung Omnia Pro II (the device is the best I’ve had in all the smart phones I’ve owned), the experience simply does not rival other mobile OS competitors in the space (notably the iPhone and Android, but also RIM’s Blackberry OS which has very strong traction in North America).

The mobility space is undeniably the “new battleground” in computing. True, the desktop and laptop computer space continually has iterations of improvement both in software and hardware but the industry has largely become commoditized. The truth of the matter is that consumers, businesses, software vendors, developers and designers are all looking to the smart device market as the new frontier of computing and a focus for building useful, new and innovative software experiences. Without a doubt, the market for smart device software has become white-hot.

Microsoft’s Strategy with Windows Phone 7 Series: The User Experience Comes First

Microsoft believes that a user’s affinity with a given mobile platform is with the experience it provides. That is to say, the platform allows the user to be the most productive and delighted when using the device. While the hardware devices themselves are a large part of this experience (nobody wants a clunky-looking smart device), I would argue it isn’t the main reason people are intrigued and itching to get into the industry. It’s the ability to create powerful user experiences through software that are driving this fervor in the mobile space. The hardware in of itself can shift the paradigm (see: iPhone) if the features of the handset have compelling functionality (such as the accelerometer and multi-touch), it’s the software that ultimately drives the experience and differentiates one mobility platform from another. With this in mind, the Windows Phone 7 Series product team spent much of their time and focus making the experience as user-centric as possible, thereby making the user the most important part of the experience (see a video on this here – please note that you may be required to sign in to view it; the sign-up is free, however).

To get a feel for what the Windows Phone 7 Series experience is like, check out the following video:

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Building Compelling User Experiences for Windows Phone 7 Series: Designers and Developers are First-Class Citizens in this Process

One thing Microsoft understands is its partner community. You hear it coming from almost anyone who works at Microsoft: we are successful only when our partners are successful. As such, we are working hard to make sure that you, as a designer or developer, can build the best smart device experiences on our platform with minimal effort and minimum barrier to entry.

Microsoft will be providing several compelling technologies to build great applications for Windows Phone 7 Series, many of which will use or build on skillsets designers and developers may already have. While as of right now, details on how to develop applications for Windows Phone 7 Series are a little light, more application development details will be forthcoming at our MIX10 event March15^th through 17^th (if you register before February 21^st you can save $200 off of the registration fee). You can expect many more details throughout the coming months and in particular at MIX10 where several breakout sessions have been dedicated to the design and development of applications for Windows Phone 7 Series.

As a Windows Phone 7 Series specialist from Microsoft Canada, I will be at this event, so if you have questions or want to book some time with me at the event, let me know! I can be reached at paul<dot>laberge<at>microsoft<dot>com or via my Twitter handle, @plaberge.

While I don’t have much information to share with you on the application design and development process yet, rest assured it is coming and once we have publicized that information I will be very happy to go through it with you in more detail.

So, What’s in the Box?

I’ve listed some of the most interesting features that will be included in Windows Phone 7 Series below. While this is obviously not an exhaustive list, this should be enough to get you thinking about what the platform can do (for a more complete list of features, please check out Joey deVilla’s Windows Phone 7 Series blog post on the Developer Connection blog):

Capacitive Multi-Touch Screen: The screen for Windows Phone 7 Series will feature 4-point multi-touch.
Task-Centric UI: The UI focuses around what is most important to the user rather than having to navigate through several apps to get to what you want. This is accomplished through the use of…
Tiles: At first glance, tiles are just a fancy name for icons, but it’s much more than that. A tile might take the form of an application’s icon, or, more intersesting, bits of user-centric information. These tiles can be customised by the user to help get access to the information most important to him/her (example: a tile linking to the user’s Facebook or Twitter profile).
Accelerometer and automatic screen rotation: The ability to sense and capture motion from the hardware.
Games: Yes, Windows Phone 7 Series will allow you to run/build games which can also include linkage to XBox Live
Consistency across hardware buttons: Each Windows 7 Phone Series-enabled smart device will have 3 buttons – a Windows (aka: “Start”) button, a Back button, and a dedicated Search button linking to…
Context-Sensitive Search: Search allows you to find info locally to your smart device and also web search. The search results are context-sensitive, meaning, for example, if you are looking for an address, it will launch Bing Maps. If you’re looking for a email it will look for that email locally or on your email server.
Social capabilities: You have the ability to manage and track your friends through your Windows Phone 7 Series smart device across multiple email clients and social networking applications.
A new version of IE: Microsoft has stated that the browser included with Windows Phone 7 Series will be the most advanced browser we have produced.
Media: The ability to store and play media (music, photos and video) is native to Windows Phone 7 Series. If you are familiar with the Zune HD interface, this will look very familiar to you.
Mail and Calendar: Very rich functionality associated with email and calendar functionality is included in the platform (which you would expect, of course!)

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list but it does provide a list of features that might be compelling to software developers and designers.

-Paul

Technorati Tags: Windows Phone 7 Series,Windows Phone,#wp7s

Heralding in the Immersive Online Olympic Experience in Canada

Paul Laberge — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:55:00 GMT

Today represents a very important day for our country – the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Over the next 2 weeks, we are going to be witness to some incredible athleticism and stories with the world united through sport.

I can remember vividly watching previous Olympic Games in front of the television, marveling at the sheer talent and determination of the Olympic athletes in their quest for not only Olympic medals, but also personal bests and the pride of representing their country. The television networks did a very good job at covering all of the activity in a way that allowed you to maximize the Olympic experience from your living room.

That being said, there are limitations associated with watching such a grand event on the television. The sheer number of concurrent events means that you can’t always watch an event that you wish to see; the television network will carry events that give them the “best bang for the buck” (hey, they paid big money for the rights to broadcast the content so it only makes sense that high priority events take precedence over other events). While, for the most part, this isn’t a huge issue, it does limit how you experience the Games in general.

With the advent of rich media on the internet, we have an opportunity to truly shape how large events such as the Olympics will be viewed moving forward. The fact that the internet is, by nature, interactive means that we have the ability to cater the viewing experience for an event to almost whatever you want it to be.

In 2008, Microsoft partnered with NBC in the United States to stream the Beijing Olympics via Silverlight, our rich online experience platform. The results of this endeavour were beyond successful. For example, in the 2 weeks of the 2008 Olympics, the Silverlight-powered NBCOlympics.com site experienced:

An average online viewing time per session of 27 minutes (the average viewing session time for internet video is around 3 minutes)
1.3 billion page views
50+ million unique visitors
70 million video streams
10 million hours of video watched
An average of 5,000 on-demand video clips every day
Hundreds of highlights produced every day, delivered to all the major computer platforms (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux)

With the success from this event, Microsoft has partnered with CTV and its affiliates to provide the same immersive experience for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver that US-based visitors to NBCOlympics.com had for the Beijing Olympics (and, for the record, NBC has also renewed the partnership with Microsoft for these Olympic Games as well).

When the games officially open on the evening of Friday, February 12, 2010, Canadians will be able to watch the Olympics from their computer through Silverlight. This experience will allow Canadians full access to every event, both live and on-demand in High Definition with interactive features that will allow the user to select info on the athletes competing, multiple camera angles and the like.

To access this interactive multimedia portal, simply go to CTVOlympics.ca (for English content) or RDSOlympiques.ca (for French content).

In addition to the online video and immersive experience through these two portals, Microsoft has also partnered with CTV on a number of other 2010 Vancouver Olympic fronts. For example:

	Internet Explorer 8 Download the customized IE8 browser (English, Français) for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. Install and enjoy web slices for IE8 specific to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics experience, including Headline News (English, Français), Photos (English, Français) and Video (English, Français). If you have IE8 but are unsure of how to install a webslice, check out this link to learn how.
	Bing Visual Search and Instant Answers With Bing, you can search athlete profiles and Olympic events in a visual manner, making it fun and easy to find information pertaining to the Vancouver Games. Torch Relay with Bing Maps See where the Olympic torch has been and the route it has taken across our country to arrive at the Olympic stadium in an interactive way with Bing Maps.
	See On-Demand Content through XBox Live If you have an XBox Live Gold account, you can view on-demand content from the 2010 Olympics directly from your XBox 360 console.

With the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Microsoft, along with CTV, has provided a new world of interactivity for a truly immersive multimedia experience. I think it’s fair to say that as we see more of these types of opportunities, we will be seeing a change in how we experience multimedia events both at home and abroad.

- Paul

A New Year and A New Beginning

qixing — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:51:02 GMT

Happy 2010 everyone! I wish all of you a healthy, joyful, and successful new year.

2009 has been a year of pursuing my dreams both personally and professionally. On the personal side, I had a fairytale wedding in my hometown in China. The wedding was a true mix of Eastern and Western cultures. On the professional side, I was searching for my next career step at Microsoft. It was not an easy year for a career move considering the economy. However, the hard work paid off in the end. I got a dream job to go with my dream wedding. :)

I’ll be joining the Windows UX Team as a UX Program Manager. The Windows 95 GUI is what inspired me to get into computer science and design in the first place, so it’s always been my dream to work on the product. It’s also a great transition from my role as a UX Evangelist because I can bring the customer and partner feedback we received in the field to the engineering team and make a direct impact to our products. In my new role, I’m part of the team that’s building the User Experience for next version of Windows. I’m really looking forward to have the chance to improve billions of users’ PC experience.

A new year is a new beginning and in my case I have a new family and job to start. It has been my pleasure to share stories from the community, new technologies, and UX design thoughts with you on this blog. I intend to continue blogging about design and technology and will let you know once I decide the location. In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter: hundredflavour.

Wish everyone the best for a prosperous 2010!

p.s. Check out the cool wallpapers for the new year from Smashing Magazine.

Design Student of the Month - Dominika Ruszkowski

qixing — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:28:07 GMT

There are a lot of creative students in Canada who are doing innovative work to improve people's life through interactive, visual, informational, and other aspects of User Experience Design. I invited them to introduce who they are and share their work with you. To nominate a Design Student of the Month, email us. The Design Student of the Month for December 2009 is Dominika Ruszkowski . Congratulations!! Let's hear from Dominika.

Who’s Dominika?

Hello! :) My name is Dominika Ruszkowski and I am master's student at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario. I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.

My favourite aspect of computer science is human-computer interaction, because of my passion for design and problem solving. The greatest satisfaction of human-computer interaction is to see that the user is happy with the end result.

Apart from school, I am an avid figure skating fan and a member of the University of Toronto Blues Varsity Figure Skating team.

What cool stuff is Dominika doing?

My research area is human-computer interaction, with a focus on interactive techniques for the typical computer user in emerging computing environments such as multi-touch enabled display surfaces. My inspiration for this line of work steamed from one of my co-op terms where I interned with Microsoft on the Windows 7 Touch team. Being able to analyze and fine-tune the interaction techniques for the touch platform for Windows 7 was both exciting and very fun. Thus when I started my Masters I was very excited about researching interaction techniques in more depth, specifically utilizing mouse and touch together on a desktop computer (the picture showcases performing zooming in PowerPoint on a HP TouchSmart running Windows 7). The impact of my work will be beneficial for future designers as a baseline of understanding which interaction techniques are best used for specific environments.

What are Dominika’s plans after graduation?

After graduation I plan on going into industry and pursuing a user-experience related position. I am not your typical computer science student, as I really enjoy talking with users, fine-tuning requirements, and designing interfaces, then handing it off to development. Therefore user-experience is a very nice fit for me.

Want to learn more about Dominika?

My online portfolio can be found at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~druszkow/ . You can drop me an email at dominikar@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: StudentoftheMonth,Canadian,HCI,Univeristy of Toronto

MIX10 and Call for Content

qixing — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:26:53 GMT

It’s not too early to think about MIX and MIX10 has a great theme – A Designer/Developer Love Fest for the Web. I’m expecting great sessions around the best practices of how designers and developers can work together creating innovative web solutions. With returning keynote speakers like Bill Buxton and Scott Guthrie, ready to be inspired by the future of web user experience design and the roles designer and developers play together in it. It’s the fifth year of the conference, and I’m happy to see the increasing number of UX sessions over the years. For example, here are some MIX10 UX sessions:

The registration for MIX10 is live and you can get the early bird price and benefits till Jan. 15, 2010. More importantly, now is the time to submit your session proposals for the next MIX. The top 10 session proposals that are voted on by the community will be selected to present at this year’s event. Get your MIX ticket now!

Technorati Tags: MIX,MIX10

Visual Design for the Windows 7 Default Background

qixing — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:32:37 GMT

Ever wonder how we came up with the visual design for Windows 7 login and default background screens? My first impressions of seeing the visuals are energetic, fun, and different from previous Windows. Since then, I’ve been wanting to hear the design story behind the creation. Luckily, on the latest post of Windows 7 Team Blog , Denise Trabona, the Senior UX Lead from the Windows Design and Research team shared the story.

If you are interested in hearing about the design thoughts behind other backgrounds in Windows 7, you can check out this video. Especially, Denise talked about the design evolution of one of my favorite backgrounds below.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Windows 7 UX,Visual Design