Tim Aidlin - User Experience Designer | The Knowledge Chamber

Tim Aidlin, is a User Experience (aka "UX") Designer at Microsoft and is responsible for many of the graphics work being done for MIX09. Since MIX has a strong focus of addressing the needs of designers such as Tim, we felt it would be useful to ask Tim his thoughts about some of the challenges which designers face when working with developers, and what sessions at MIX09 Tim is personally interested in attending.

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Webserviceguru

Feb 17, 2009 at 10:43 AM

It's Robert Hess from the .Net Show....cool!! What happen to that show??..i loved it!
Robert Hess Changing the world, one cocktail at a time.

Feb 17, 2009 at 4:38 PM

Mr. Guru... or can I call you Web?

Glad you enjoyed The .NET Show! Erica and I had a great time working on this show for over seven years. Even Star Trek: The Next Generation decided to wrap up after seven years, and I felt that I couldn't suggest that The .NET Show was better then that! :->

I am currently playing around with using "The Knowledge Chamber" as a replacement for The .NET Show. The format will allow me to do shows far more regularly, and far cheaper (which is important these days!). I will be adjusting the tone and format over time based on what I percieve as the feedback from you, the audience. So please let me know what you think of the show, it's length, my guests, etc.

Thanks!
-Robert
jamie Niner since 2004

Feb 18, 2009 at 2:45 PM

ok ..so i actually watched this.

i dont want to rag about it.. the guy seems nice enough... but basically it seemed like a staged advert for expression and workflow

Maybe interview the designers that work for this (marketing) guy... and show samples of their work - and how they made it.

And how many revisions they had to go through working with the teams at MS

Sorry - but Experience Designer... does not = the grunts that actually design the stuff
Charles Welcome Change

Feb 18, 2009 at 5:39 PM

Umm... Tim IS one of the guys who both uses these products in his daily work and helps the Expression team get it right...
C
jamie Niner since 2004

Feb 18, 2009 at 7:00 PM

great. cant wait to see samples of his work. his designs. how he made them.

Id settle for rough mockups others finished - otherwise ..its not really about design
Robert Hess Changing the world, one cocktail at a time.

Feb 23, 2009 at 3:02 PM

Jamie... well, you can always check out: http://2009.visitmix.com/ to see some of Tim's work, he designed most, if not all, of the MIX09 creative material.

But... you do raise a good point. It would have been appropriate to let Tim dive into some of his actual work and show how he produces it.

-Robert
Tim Aidlin

Apr 10, 2009 at 2:07 PM

I can understand the concerns raised, but I assure you, what I say is not from a Marketing point-of-view, but someone who's actually working in the trenches building WPF applications, functional xHTML, CSS, and JavaScript websites, and considers himself to be as possibly "technology agnostic" as is possible, working for Microsoft I'll totally acknowledge having a bias, of course, but know I really do come from a User Experience point-of-view first.

As for samples of work I've done that speak well specifically to the developer/designer workflow, let me point you to a couple samples:

Flotzam
http://flotzam.com

Oomph: A Microformats Toolkit
http://visitmix.com/Lab/oomph

SongSmith Application (not website or marketing)
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/index.html

So, hope this is helpful. Robert and I stay in good contact, so keep an eye out for more interviews with the two of us.

I totally welcome your feedback, and think your idea of recording some videos of how I actually design these applications is a great one. Thanks for getting in touch.