Wednesday 10th May, sun streaming through my bedroom window, hmm… time to head over to The Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden and join the fun. WinFX, the Windows Presentation Foundation and of course Vista are designed with some key user objectives in mind - making the user experience more engaging, more productive and more fun.
Paul Dawson (Head of Interactive Media at Conchango) was presenting, and his timely joke was a great ice-breaker that allowed the wow factor to follow, “When Microsoft told us they had some new tools for interactive and visual design, we thought, Oh great! a new version of MS paint!”. Sure enough, when looking deeper, the possibility of rich, next generation, emotive and immersive user experiences become apparent. Vista, WPF/Everywhere allow for the integration of video, 3-D modelling, animation and seamless data. Microsoft’s new design tools (Expression Interactive Designer, Graphic Designer and Web Designer) create an authoring environment to bring these elements together.
So, what else? There was an ‘Importance of User Experience’ session which set the scene. A ‘Designer Tools Landscape’ session acknowledged that there is now an alternative to Flash. An alternative yes, but potentially something more powerful, as WPF builds upon the .NET framework. For me, this could mean a visualisation of objects, whether they are commercial products, research materials or perhaps my own personal details. I love the idea of some of these being sat around my desktop ready for use, and the possibility of my personal details travelling with me when I visit an online store or community that I’d like to join.
So who’s doing stuff with Vista, WPF and the Expression tools? Well, the excellent and ubiquitous North Face demo was well positioned in the theatre time-out zone. Back in the theatre with a captive audience, two great demos from Conchango developed with Expression tools. The FT demo - dropping video into e-mail with continuous play and the idea of an FT widget on the desktop ready to use or alerting as new content arrives. A demon-demo for the Robbie Williams brand offers a concert experience with multiple video streams and camera selection while product visualization (shirts, memorabilia etc) creates a more tactile offering in a ‘let’s move these around, maybe into my shopping cart’ kind of way – brilliant.
So, to Microsoft who demonstrated some of the Expression tools. This is probably a good start in the right direction and maybe they need a further programme of evangelising to get people on board. Perhaps some master classes and I guess there’s always the possibility of showcasing work online…. and then reaching back out to designers and developers that way.