Usability Research at Microsoft

Posted By: Adam Kinney | Nov 14th, 2007 @ 3:58 PM | 10,674 Views | 6 Comments
Last week, David Shadle and I met up with three gentlemen Arnie Lund, UX Community lead for IT, Monty Hammontree, Director of User Experience for Developer Products, and Dennis Wixon, User Research Manager for Microsoft Game Studios.  who were all speakers at the World Usability Day event at Microsoft.

We discussed what "Usability" means in the context of their position, how it affects the products they work on and what types of techniques they use to study Usability.

I found the talk very interesting and unique.  Usability is an important topic when creating software, but is not often discussed widely.  Watch the video and you might gain some insight into why you enjoy Visual Studio or even HALO 3 as much as you do.
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#Nov 14th, 2007 @ 9:03 PM
stun
stun
I am going to be very sarcastic here to let my pent up frustration with the "Shut down" button being hidden...
I say they need to go do some more research...


Ahh.....now I feel better after letting that out of my chest...


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Usability ???
#Nov 14th, 2007 @ 11:38 PM
NeZz_DK
NeZz_DK
you can change that setting in the power options Smiley here is a guide
http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=317
#Nov 15th, 2007 @ 11:09 AM
nektar
nektar

   Usability across all MS games and even those on the Internet? Well ... time to modernize your MSN Games site and the MSN Games collection itself don't you think? Perhaps it's time for Windows Live Games? Why are MSN Games the same old games as before?

#Nov 15th, 2007 @ 2:11 PM
ZippyV
ZippyV
Fired Up

Please encode this video at the right resolution.

#Nov 15th, 2007 @ 9:24 PM
acnvrk
acnvrk
Maybe they did the research on people like me Smiley . I rarely, if ever Shutdown my computer. It always goes into hibernation. The percentage of laptops sold is growing each year, and I remeber reading somewhere that it surpassed desktop sales a couple of years ago. And Vista which would be sold for the next 3-4 years atleast needs to take this into consideration. Just my take on why it might have been designed that way.

stun wrote:
I am going to be very sarcastic here to let my pent up frustration with the "Shut down" button being hidden...
I say they need to go do some more research...


Ahh.....now I feel better after letting that out of my chest...

#Nov 20th, 2007 @ 11:02 AM
W3bbo
W3bbo
The Master of Baiters
ZippyV wrote:


Please encode this video at the right resolution.



I've been having problems with the video too: playback stuttered in some part of it, the Seek bar didn't work, WMP6.4 couldn't open it, and it crashed WMP9 around 3/4s into it. Ah well.
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