Terrell Cox: Evolution of User Experience (UX) at Microsoft

Posted By: Charles | Feb 14th @ 11:42 AM

Terrell Cox, Principal UX Manager for our Management Solutions Group in our Server and Tools Division, talks to us about how the world of developers and designers are blurring (yes, even for our server products!).

User Experience is becoming more and more important at Microsoft, and Terrell tells us how her team leads the charge on making sure the customer is always represented and that the programmer doesn’t forget the original design of the product.

Hello…..did somebody say MIX? Smiley

Low res download file.

Tags: Usability, User Experience

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farina

Good! I'd like to see Microsoft start concentrating on the UI...if only they weren't 10 years late Smiley

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I absolutly agree the line between design and development is bluring, and I'm more than happy to see the merger.

Charles
Welcome Change

farina wrote:

Good! I'd like to see Microsoft start concentrating on the UI...if only they weren't 10 years late .

I absolutly agree the line between design and development is bluring, and I'm more than happy to see the merger.

Make sure to visit Mix Online to learn about the great things going on in the UX world both here at MS and at other companies.
C

iStation
Fuujin

Many thumbs-ups for this video.
UX is beyond logic rather aesthetics, emotions and very important for success.
Smiley

littleguru
allein, allein,... allein, allein!

UX is very important. Very! Today we have the power to finally enable great UXes and that's why they should be created.

LiquidBoy
Silverlight

I love the UX team at Microsoft, they are doing an amazing job of highlighting to the developer community of the importance of designers to the SDLC.

The issue is that there are a immensly short supply of designers with microsoft skills. They are all residing in the adobe/flash arena.

The challenge over the next couple of years is to, in order of importance,

1. Convince the adobe/flash developer community to take up microsoft skills and design for us
2. Train the existing arsenal of microsoft experienced developers with good design skills to move into design.
3. Convince a new generation of designers that the microsoft way is worth investing in, get them from Uni or from non-traditional IT related fields.

It's no use having all these cool new tools to design in if there arnt designers to use them!

ps. Im not an MS employee BUT i love the whole UX approach that Im going out of my way to do 1 and 2 above. If we can grow our designer market to half the size of adobe's, were talking a billion dollar industry arising from virtual nothing.

Great talk and looking forward to more talks from the UX team!!!

FireGarden
The Business of Software

Have you ever tried coke? I think you would be good on it.

Roger

I'm very glad to see a greater emphasis from Microsoft on UX matters, and it's good (?) to know that have a lot of the same issues we have (engineering culture, immature tools, etc.)