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Microsoft Hires GUI 'Design Guru'
overpayd writes "ZDnet is reporting that Microsoft has hired 'user interface guru' Bill Buxton to work as a senior researcher. Will this move help focus the design teams for Vista, Office, etc? From the article: 'My sense is that Microsoft is in transition from an engineering-led company to as much a design-led company ... There are more designers at Microsoft on any single team as there were, not too long ago, in the entire company. It's a wonderful change.'"
Okay, I'm done reading about three articles about Bill Buxton. Sounds like a bright and interesting guy.
Now, the litmus test, which Microsoft repeatedly fails, will be whether Microsoft cares or is willing to listen to this guy and his ideas. In my opinion, Microsoft's hiring of high-profile talents or personalities in the past has been more for:
The last great creative mind I remember at Microsoft was Nathan Myhrvold, and I can't remember any great contributions from him.
As for Burton's quote about the move and Microsoft:
Microsoft always has been and always be a Gates/Ballmer-led company, and that's not about engineering, and that's not about design. Waxing eloquent about his new employer is quaint, but Burton sheds no light on Microsoft's intentions or future directions. If history serves, no changes are in the offing.
This is news, but it isn't big news, and it isn't very interesting news.
Someone got this guy to work on a *nix desktop environment.
For such a powerfull operating system it has a crippled userinterface.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Shouldn't they have hired this guy BEFORE completing and releasing all those betas of Vista?
As far as I can tell, engineering is trying to create a solution for a problem.
Design, on the other hand, extends engineering by trying to figure out the problem first.
For things like bridges, the problem is fairly self evident: There is a gap or chasm to cross. It is synonymous to design or engineer a bridge.
Airports, on the other hand, are much tougher problems to tackle. You don't engineer an airport, you design an airport.
Maybe a better way to put it is: Designers work around the requirements of people. Engineers work around the requirements of the problem.
If you have a designer involved, the engineers will have already taken into account the requirements of the people. If you don't have a designer around, then the engineers have to fake it and come up with ad hoc solutions to meet the unexpected needs of the people you are trying to help.
GPL Deconstructed
Further, his own page, which was linked to from the article, states that he will be working at Microsoft Research. It doesn't take much thought to conclude that it's very unlikely that someone who just got hired at Microsoft Research would have a significant, if any, impact on Vista and Office 12 which are already in Beta.
Please put some thought into article summaries.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Good design is both very important and very difficult to get right. However this probably means you need a few good designers not more designers. A good UI that make sense to your typical user is not easy to do, especially if you plan on doing anything different from the norm.
Honestly? Because no matter what he does, even if it is the next best thing since sliced bread, the majority of /. posters aren't going to be satisfied as it still is Microsoft.
Let some other company do it and it will be lauded. Let some other company screw it up and it probably won't get posted or if it does a million bad examples superficially similar to something wrong Microsoft did will be used to excuse it.
Microsoft may be lead by certain people but most of their products do have that design by committee look. The one thing that makes OSS great can also make it aggravating and that is that a lot of it is created by individuals. Individuals don't always feel a need to compromise and that can lead to true innovation. Fortunately their screw ups are rarely noticed until they have gained name recognition. Multinational corporations don't have that ability anymore.
Look at this way, at least they are hiring people that are known quantities. From that we can at least deduce what they are trying to do or hope to do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As someone who has personally seen Bill Buxton speak, and also as someone who has had HCI (Human Computer Interaction as the field is actually called) training, I can say that for once the Zonk is not totally wrong.
I agree he should have read the article before posting, but it's also not correct to say he has no direct relation to GUIs. He speaks very much of design and how to make proper GUIs. In fact he actually teaches design at his university.
A big part of HCI is GUI design. How could it not be? After all how do most humans interact with computers?
To quote Bill Buxton:
"Not only should you get the design right, but more importantly, you should get the right design."
He is most certainly a guru of design, and that includes GUI.
ever wondered that the only reason why MS product are so popular are because of the way they've gone about mastering Human Computer Interaction, its not like *nix with a gooey too complex and comprehensible by 0.1% (geeks) of the human on the planet and hence fails to pick up. This is another step in the right direction, kudos microsoft!
sandy
Alan Cooper's "The Inmates are Running the Asyulum" and "About Face" books are good overviews of designing for user needs rather than against system internals. (I used to work for Alan).
Donald Norma's "Design of Everyday Things" is an excellent book that will give you a new way of looking at problems. DOET is about non-software (doors, tekettles, etc.) but once you've read it, you will never look at the design of things in quite the same way.
These books aren't step-by-step directions on how to achieve good design. They are more about getting into the right frame of mind so that you can think clearly about what good design might mean. I can't recommend them enough (especially DOET).
There's alo a book called "GUI Design Bloopers" that is an excellent reference on what NOT to do.
HTH.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Good design is one of the most time consuming processes I've ever participated in. It really doesn't just flow out from no where. UI Design (the act of slapping widgets on a screen) is quick. Good or Proper UI Design (that act of researching how people use a product, determining the best way (sequence of actions, icon image) to communicate an action or response, etc) is grueling and takes time.
Of course its all OT - the article isn't even about design in the typical sense (pixels on a page)...
I am growing increasingly weary of this attitude. Design is just as much an aspect of engineering as engineering is an aspect of design. A bunch of designers going willy-nilly with no handle on engineering is just as bad as a bunch of engineers doing the same thing to design. Human factors indeed.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Oh, right. Good computer human interaction.
Like being able to click on a filename in tile mode to initiate a rename action, but then having the filename move away from your mouse so when you click again to select the entry point, you deselect the filename.
Or how the only way to access the tile and cascade window functions of the OS is by right-clicking the taskbar, when half the users out there don't know the difference between right and left click.
Right, that Microsoft.
GPL Deconstructed
'My sense is that Microsoft is in transition from an engineering-led company to as much a design-led company ...'
.. the only difference is the Marketing department realized that XP was "good enough" and they needed to revamp the interfaces so people would upgrade.
My sense is that Microsoft was a Marketing company and is still a Marketing company
Or the one that really gets me, which is system-modal dialogues popping up from some other crud program when I'm typing something, stealing the keyboard focus, and then going haywire because some of the characters I typed corresponded to accelerators in the dialogue. Comparing OS X' little icons that bounce up and down at the bottom of the screen when they want attention with that monstrosity is like the difference between arriving at a fine restaurant in a Rolls Royce with a supermodel at your side, and being dragged by the testicles from Beijing to New Delhi by a pickup with with Barry Manilow in the back.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
God help us if his designs look anything like his home page.
There are undoubtedly others I've forgotten or not heard about. Add your contribution. Maybe we can put up a monument somewhere.
Speaker
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."