Bill Buxton inspired MIX

MIX09, Microsoft’s ideas forum for website designers and developers, really caught my interest because it featured Bill Buxton. Microsoft hired Bill in 2005 as Principal Researcher to focus on
the emerging world of ubiquitous computing. This year is proof that Microsoft are taking design seriously. Bill kicked off the whole shindig with his presentation entitled The Return on Experience. This is territory normally reserved for product and technology announcements.

He enthusiastically talked about design and the design process. As part of the converted, it was impossible to stop nodding as he explained that the user experience is not the object or the user interface but that true experience is the result of the interaction with the thing. Experience is holistic. For those of us who do design interfaces, a good bit of advice is to make sure our “state transition diagrams” actually describe the transitions. The baseline is to create something that is functional - it works logically and technically. However, the experience is characterised by how you get from state A to state B. Experience is about designing for flow.

Day 2 of MIX reinforced the design theme with Deborah Adler’s keynote presentation of the Target ClearRx system, a reinvention of the prescription bottle and label. This was launched back in 2005 but is still a great case study of how design can make a real difference. In this instance, it saves lives. Her parting bit of advice beautifully encapsulates the user-centred design ethos: “a successful design experience begins by, one, having a love affair with your customer and really digging into your customer’s needs, and two, bringing your design skills to bear in solving those needs both humanly and humanely”.

There were numerous technology announcements and I won’t list them here. Here’s a good recap. There was one feature that I liked. It had Bill Buxton written all over it. It’s called SketchFlow and is part of Expression Blend 3. SketchFlow allows interactions to be prototyped with sketches or something more evolved. Remember, experience is about the transitions and the flow. I haven’t tried Expression Blend since it was in beta. This makes me want to give it another go.

Bill B is the best thing to happen to Microsoft since, well, Bill G. He points out that the challenge is how to deliver the experience and get the return no matter what the platform is. True brand experience transcends platforms and channels. Does all this point to a new Microsoft - one that is less about engineering and more design-led?