Windows Workflow Foundation API Usability Lab Video – Part 2

The Discussion

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  I actually watched this video from beginning to end, despite the bad encode quality.
  
  It was pretty insightful as to how usability labs work. The guy being observed added a lot to the video, though, and kept it interesting. I didn't know programmers were supposed to think that much!
  
  

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  Im glad they have decided to do studies on the usability of WWF communications.  Of all things WWF, I am, by far, finding this to be the most difficult concept to grok..
  
  

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  Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!
  
  WOW!! This was really interesting. Please post more (I think there's more than the part2 this specific test?) usability tests for APIs...specially the Avalon stuff... some of the devs here are really into Avalon and going over these also helps us on which things we aren't thinking right. It would be awesom if the tests and activities are made public, but oh well that's far from happening right ?
  
  Anyways, this was intersting. I never thought APIs need these kinds of tests, but going by the feedback the PMs/Leads had and types of things you can find out (like that classic help file issue the participant had) these are well worth every penny!
  
  Looking forward to more of these ....
  
  And did I say Excellent? Excellent!
  
  And thank you
  

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  Btw, Charles - do you plan to add some "hands-on" types videos (or similar tests like these but for devs here who can use them) as part of your going-deep series?
  
  If these tests or hands-on labs from the PDCs (some are public though) are made available, and then video dicussions about the APIs and going really deep with white board explanations (like Chirs Anderson going deep in Avalon ) would be cool!
  
  Keep the workflow stuff coming... that concept is hard to grasp at first but as you learn more, you just keep saying to yourself "Gosh! I can do this better using WF" or just getting the basic concepts of WF.
  
  

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  I like the Hands-On concept. Interesting, Captain...
  C

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  Very interesting.
  I would love to see more stuff like this.
  

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  Very interesting to watch.  I recently watched another video about using Predictive Fetch with Ajax in web forms and watching this video brought it to mind.
  
  I think Microsoft could go a long way into enhancing the intellisense with predictive fetch and it sure would have helped in this case.
  
  Another observation I made was when the poor guy had to search through the documentation as we all have done, and there is just this overwhelming amount of data to parse.  Maybe MS can use the predictive fetch to draw an order of probability for what the user is looking for based upon the subjects he has highlighted in the search results pane!  Now that would be the next level of intelligent programming!