the age of ux
Joseph T. Paranteau
Microsoft Corporation
June 19th, 2007

Topics for Tonight
• About Me
• Why User Experience Matters
• Microsoft and UX?
• Designing Office and Vista 2007

User Experience
Rich user experience, familiar tools
Development Tools, Enhanced productivity
Suppliers
Development Lifecycle
Business Intelligence
Reporting, Analytics, Scorecarding
SOA & Business Process
Business Process Automation, SOA, Integration
Customers
Data Management
Data Store, BI capability, DB Services
Infrastructure & Management Layer

Today’s Landscape – Why UX Matters
?
the ux lever
raises the bar
differentiates product/service
offers new market opportunities
provides operational efficiency and business insight
business results

Customer Testimonial: Elite Model Management

ux differentiates product or service

ux raises the bar

ux offers new market opportunities

ux provides operational efficiency and business
insight

ux
=
more revenue
+
reduced customer support costs
+
greater customer loyalty
+
competitive advantage
+
more…
_____________________________
advance the business

how can microsoft be a ux enabler?

Customer Testimonial: North Face

productivity tools for designers and
developers

Microsoft Expression & Visual Studio
designer developer
designers & developers can
streamline their collaboration
XAML
XHTML
CSS
XML/XSLT
ASP.NET AJAX

Consistent fast installation forplatform experiences
Deliver Cross browser, cross users
Introducingexperiencesgraphics, Windows & Mac
Stunning Microsoft Silverlight
Seemless, vector-based between
media, text, animation, and overlays

Silverlight in Advertising: Expandable banner
MULTIPLE PANELS AND/OR FLOATING ADS LAUNCH FROM A BANNER VIA CLICK,
MOUSEOVER OR AUTO-INITIATION.

simply speaking

microsoft ux continuum
=
ux as a business lever
+
ux skill set and assets
+
platform/XAML
+
designer-developer collaboration
_______________________________
advance the business
across all touch points

UX Platform & Tooling Across All Touch Points
window vista
.net fx/wpf, scripting
vs, expression
media center, xbox windows office 12
extender
oba
html, mcml, wpf, directx
vsto
ux
touch
digital home office
points
web live, ie7, windows
cardspace
windows mobile
asp.net ajax, “wpf/e”,
.net compact fx, “wpf/e” device web
scripting
vs, expression
vs web dev, expression

the experience is the product

designing the user experience (ux)
of
Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007

Xerox Star

It starts with a clear sense of a mission.
It starts with the desire to be more than we are today.
A highly coveted brand.
A more skilled competitor.
A better partner.
A more profitable entity.
A more productive and enjoyable experience.
A legacy.

user‟s goals, expectations, mental model, emotional state, physical and cognitive
abilities | controls & widgets | user model | interaction model | data model |
concepts & abstractions | underlying system bits | aesthetics |
audio, tone & language of the text | the brand | physical
hardware & devices connected to the PC | content |
environment in which all this takes place |
More than just the User Interface.
It is the complete end-to-end interaction that
the user has with the product.

Vision, Strategy, Technology Bets
Research & Analysis
& Imperatives
Design: Concept Demos, idea prototypes
Research: Field studies, Instrumented Version data,
ethnography, Contextual Inquiry
Concept Solutions, Requirements
Conceptualization
& Constraints
Design: Problem analyses, sketches, schematics & flows, low-
fidelity prototypes, visual design direction
Research: focus groups, cognitive walk-through, instrumented
version, low-fidelity iterative testing
Iteration, Prototypes, Usability Testing,
Detail Design
Specs
Design: High-fidelity prototypes, „protospecs‟, visual specs,
final visual design, toolkit and guidelines
Research: lab testing, benchmarks (end to end, Beta)
Production, Fit & Finish, Bugs & Cuts
Implementation
Design: Art work, last-minute changes, “cuts”, “nasty detail”-
protospecs,
Research: Benchmarks, comparative studies, field studies

User Research
Great user experience cannot be delivered
without customer feedback.
It does not matter how experienced a team you have,
how few concepts you’re employing, or how brilliant
and consistent your user model is:
Ultimately users need to be involved to give you
feedback on the user experience.

User Research – Quick Stats
• 3000+ users in 1:1 research or small group research during the making of Windows Vista
• Instrumentation data was gathered from 8000+ XP users
• 20,000+ users participating in instrumentation programs to gather usage and configuration
data and info through survey panels
• Tracking 150+ common tasks for ease of use in Windows Vista
• 50+ consumer families using beta since 2005 to give feedback on the day-to-day
experience
• Families in 7 countries in field research (US, India, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Finland, Israel)
• Ethnographic research was conducted in Finland, Korea, Brazil, India, Russia, and US.
• Engaged with international enterprises to understand their baseline use of XP and monitor
improvements with Windows Vista as beta has been deployed
• For Living with Vista we have received close to 5000 comments from 50 families (US and
international) since the inception of the program at Beta 1 in August ‘05

Design Goals
Makes getting to what you need
Efficient and Easy
Makes getting the results you want in Windows more
Visual & Direct
Makes people feel great about their Experience;
creates a positive emotional connection

AERO aesthetic development
Smart, Meet Beautiful.

Setup & Welcome

First Impressions

Start menu, Start button

Window management

Explorer

Common Operations Engine and UI

Common Operations Engine and UI

Top 200 error messages and notifications removed,
fixed or improved

Dialogs and Wizards

New AERO icons

Live Icons (thumbnails)

Microsoft Office 2007
but first, a trip down the memory lane

Word 1.0

Word 6.0

Word 97

perception of bloating

Clippy: Office 97

Rafted Toolbars: Office 2000
Word 2000

TaskPanes: Office XP
XP

the tipping point for menus, toolbars, and task panes

need for contextualization and galleries

Contextual Tabs
Object Specific Contextual Tabs

Galleries

Galleries

usability: the art, the science, and the stockholm syndrome

Usability Projects office 2003 benchmark
+
eye tracking
+
card Slot
+
internal longitudinal studies
+
the “truman” show
+
office 12 benchmark
+
extended usage study
+
beta survey and visits
+
other efforts…
_________________________________
usability projects in office 2007

Accessibility Begets Usability

Stockholm Syndrome
Usability Stockholm Syndrome

the prototyping process

Paper, PowerPoint…
Paper Prototypes

1000 Card Pick-Up
1000 Card Pickup Card Sorting

performance is also an element ux

Fast at any Speed

The Junk Drawer
Flea market of Functionality

obsession to detail

The “Eat Dismiss Click” Story

customization and statistics

fitt’s law and office 2007

Fitt’s Law and Office 2007Law

1.3 billion sessions of data

Measuring Results
It’s Not all About the Data

giving you the ribbons

Ribbons for Word

Ribbons for Excel

Ribbons for PowerPoint

the vice presidents start beating the drums

Catching the Plane

Final Thoughts
• “user want more functionality, but want it to be presented as less”
• “business is balancing the possibilities of design with the practicalities of reality”
• “the experience is not part of the product. the product is part of the experience”

the experience is the product

Photosynth – http://labs.live.com

thank you
Joseph Paranteau

Resources
• Windows Vista Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/
• Office as a Development Platform
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/tool/vsto/
• Windows Live
http://msdn.microsoft.com/live/
• Microsoft Visual Studio
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/
• Microsoft Expression
www.microsoft.com/expression
• Other Developer Centers (.NET Framework 3.0, ASP.NET, etc.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/developercenters/
• Microsoft Surface
• http://www.microsoft.com/surface