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.'"
Wow, you really have no idea what HCI is, do you? I'm a straight up coder, and even I know that HCI isn't analogous to 'interior design'. HCI is supposed to cover all the ways that you interact with your computer - keyboard shortcuts (and yes, that includes the idea of having the cut/copy/paste keys right next to each other - that happens *because* of HCI work, not in spite of it), muscle memory, principle of least surprise, hotspots (e.g. it's easier to move your cursor to one of the four corners of the screen than it is to any other location) and so on. About the only 'interior design' that shows up is stuff like not having green text on a red background, or anything else that makes your eyes bleed.