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Positive Trends In UX: Educate Yourself and Learn What is a Myth and What is Not.

Jonathan Firestone — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:26:28 +0000

One of my favorite sites of late is a cool site called “UX Myths”. UX Myths is a pretty nice little site brought to you by Zoltán Gócza and Zoltán Kollin at Kirowski in Budapest, Hungary. They quite clearly detail the differences between opinion, fiction and fact, and they back it up with statistics and examples whenever possible. ROI baby, that’s where it’s at. For example, check out the opening of Myth #27, UX Design is about usability.

Myth #27: UX design is about usability Designing for the user experience has a lot more to it than making a product usable. Usability allows people to easily accomplish their goals. UX design covers more than that, it’s about giving people a delightful and meaningful experience. A good design is pleasurable, thoughtfully crafted, makes you happy, and gets you immersed. Think of games, they usually have these characteristics. Or think of the iPhone that makes even failures “more enjoyable than succeeding on a Blackberry”.

I’d love to hear if my readers disagree with their findings on this Myth — I land pretty heavily in support of what’s presented for Myth #27 by the authors’ viewpoints, but of course it’s all open for discussion. Feel free to leave a comment below. For or against or somewhere in-between I’d love to hear your take on it.

Positive Trends in UX: A customer first attitude is critical

Jonathan Firestone — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:44:47 +0000

Recently I had the pleasure of working with a wonderful company called TMG on a few short-term projects. The company believed that time and again, you had to do whatever it takes to help a customer, to define yourself by giving “Hugs” to your customers. There’s also a company, called Headscape that espouses the same thing. Paul Boag, a Web strategist and a founder of Headscape is obsessive in his quest to deliver great customer service to his clients. It’s probably safe to say at this point that I believe in what both of these companies are all about — a customer first attitude. Delivering that “hug” to the customer that understands what you’re producing in a very human way of connecting to people and trying to make their lives easier. Their pain, their wants, their needs are all in the thoughts of any Web strategist, or user experience practitioner worth their salt. In Paul’s recent blog post, he points out a comprehensive customer service plan a company had in place to serve it’s client’s needs and identifies this as a growing trend among companies, and I couldn’t agree more. Customers of every industry around the world are realizing that their lives are filled with pain and frustration — they want products that have a great user experience on the outside, and great usability. However, as you’re about to see they’re stuck with a nasty choice in the end after all the hard work of getting the product out the door. Alot of companies think the process is simple and it ends when the product is done. That’s not true is it? You can…

A) get a product that’s the cheapest, or
B) have spent the money to get the best product produced that you could

Customers have come to expect they have to pay a little more to get the best, but regardless of how much was spent on making it better… if your customer service stinks the world’s going to be a cold, cold place for you. Paul pleads with his readers to ensure what’s happening in the organization is equal to what’s happening outside the organization. When you’re consulting for a client, follow through is critical. I found another company that espouses that on the Web, a small web design agency called “Headscape”. They produce a great podcast called Boagworld, where they discuss aspects of Web strategy, web design, usability, and a lot of other great things that are important to the emerging Web. My hat’s tipping to one of the podcasters, Paul Boag who has quite a bit to say about the subject. I urge you to explore what he has to say.

Positive Trends in UX: Integrating UX into Agile Development

Jonathan Firestone — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:19:42 +0000

I’m very excited by something I’ve just read at UX Matters, “Integrating UX into Agile Development“. A nice article where they discuss some of the expectations in maintaining an Agile team for UX, and it ironically keys into some things I’m working on right now. At any rate it’s a good article, I recommend it. One of my favorite parts is the coverage of a method which I love for bringing UX testing into the Agile Development mission:

fast planning—No longer do we have to have a face-to-face planning meeting. Instead, I send out a list of things I need to know about the study goals, tasks, personas, and issues. From this, I can initiate planning of the elements, some of which I write and some my clients draft for my review. We do an email exchange, oftentimes with many email messages going back and forth in a single day, until we get the study protocol mapped out.

participant recruiting—If I’m recruiting and scheduling the participants, I get the dates and timeframe for the study first, along with user profiles. Then I start recruiting right away from a database of accessible potential participants.

rough and tumble pilots—I warn my client that the pilot is likely to be very rough because we are working under very tight deadlines, so we need to plan for an intense hour after the pilot, when we’ll make the needed changes between the pilot and the tests we’ll run for the rest of the day with participants.

fast debriefs at the end of each day—We print test logs throughout the day and use these at the end of the day to capture the top findings from all observers. If we are doing two days of testing, this quick meeting at the end of the day captures things we don’t want to forget during our review on the second day. If a study lasts just a single day, this meeting gets everyone together to agree on the findings and prioritize the issues the development team needs to fix. The developers, when present, walk out with their list of issues to address in the next or a future sprint. If they are not present, we send these findings, along with the logs of sessions, to everybody the same night.

Another section mentions another cool factor, which I find even effects teams using waterfall but make use of intense collaboration (like the team I’m working with right now):

“This increased overlap between the work of team members in various disciplines not only changes their social and cultural interrelationships, instilling increased cross-disciplinary empathy and understanding, but also replaces traditional document-centered communication—which is slow, unwieldy, and incompatible with the velocity of contemporary agile software development projects—with fast, lightweight communication that reflects the current project reality. “This type of change does not come easily to organizations. It frequently requires changing how and where people work, how an organization plans projects and builds product teams, and the nature of an organization’s psychological relationship to documents, which ultimately tend to be little more than imaginary assurances of progress. Therefore, I recommend starting small, with a pilot team of energetic team members, who can then become a living testimonial of success for the rest of the organization.”

Positive Trends in User Experience: Panel Navigation

Jonathan Firestone — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:46:47 +0000

I refer to Mega dropdowns as “Panel Navigation”. It’s much more descriptive. But I do think of it as a huge opportunity to inform the user about the content that lies ahead. You might know this UX pattern by another name. In March of 2009, Jacob Nielson summarized mega dropdowns as “Big, two-dimensional drop-down panels [that are] group[ing] navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain the user’s choices.”

Reuters navigation panel example: Opinion category panel

Reuters.com’s implementation of them (as you can see to the right) is probably one of the best and most widely used examples of how you would make use of this type of panel navigation. In this instance, we’re looking at a story within the Reuters site. Imagine that the user has clicked on a link posted to twitter to read an opinion article. The user examines the content seen here, and decides they’d like to see what else catches their fancy. The user then rolls over the navigation and instead of making the user guess as to what might be interesting to them based on simple titles, or more content categories (or topics), the user is presented with something that is entirely different and a hundred times more usable and appealing. A navigation panel that incorporates content into the mix is much more engaging and informative to the user. In this example, the navigation panel is divided into four columns. In the first a few of the biggest active stories within the category of Analysis & Opinion. It appears to be a short-list of stories dedicated to summaries which fall under the Analysis portion of the content. Columns dedicated to “Breakingviews” and “Opinion” feature friendly faces and names of columnists along with the title of their latest column. The column to the far right contains a list of various columns and varied sections of interest within this category set.

Typical Dropdown Navigation Example (From the Washington Post)

This kind of navigation improvement is much more usable than something like what you see to the left. The questions I have to ask are “Is this informative?”, “Does the user understand what will happen next?” I think anything you can do to help the user remain engaged is a good idea, and as you can see this news organization has a dropdown for navigation, but it’s pretty typical. Regardless of how good the information architecture is, the risk you are taking is that the user won’t want to look much farther for items of interest, nor will they have an interest in subsections which might have a lot more to offer the user than just a simple topic. Immerse the user in your world. You’ve got nothing to lose, and technology like this, once you have a syntax to follow can be very easy to implement and maintain. Regardless of what you do, you should test it against your users, just as Mr. Nielsen recommends.

Osnapz Chewy Goodness

Jonathan Firestone — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:23:32 +0000

I love getting things in my email that just make me smile, don’t you? Well for being just a regular social media geek, spending some time on Twitter, I’ve earned a ton of badges through the Osnapz site. Through a connection to Foursquare, you could earn badges for Osnapz by patching in your information and the badges you’ve earned there will connect up to your list of badges. Check out my latest badge:

1,000 Tweets

What’s impressive about this fun little service is the addicting way they get you to pursue more badges. They tell you what’s next and what you have to do in order to get there. Very cool. I’m expecting to see other social media activity badges. Wow, I just realized they’ve turned me back into a Boy Scout, earning achievement badges. Outstanding! As I mentioned, a similar badge system is in use at Foursquare.com, which encourages you to earn badges by earning points and competing with your friends to visit places (usually restaurants, but buildings are just fine) and you earn extra points for tasks and to-dos that get completed along the way that users generate. Foursquare is attempting to sweeten the deal by asking users for suggestions regarding new place-related badges with tasks for completion. You’re welcome to suggest alternate ideas and methods of acquisition. I ended up submitting my own idea for a series of badges geared toward people who love buffalo wings. I identified some restaurant chains they could track, and you could earn badges for progressive visits or the quantity of wings you could eat. i.e. “Wing Commander” badge if you reach 300 visits to restaurants that serve up wings of all kinds. At any rate, I’m impressed. Not only do they take us back to our youth (having just realized the connection as I write this) but it’s a fun way to share net-based, and real world accomplishments. I look forward to seeing how this service expands over the next year.

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Five Game Changing Gadgets you should expect to see in the next decade

Jonathan Firestone — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:41:01 +0000

Following up on my version of the Best Gadgets of the Decade, I’m providing a list of five game-changing gadgets you should expect to see in the next decade, along with a description of the likely impacts.

Apple Tablet / iSlate - I do believe this is arriving (or at least due to be announced) in January. The iSlate (I do believe it’ll be called that) will be a hybrid between the a Macbook and an iPhone. It’ll be capable of using iPhone apps as well as desktop apps, I believe the specs will be be something similar to what you see on the Macbook Air, but of course it won’t have a cover over the screen. Over time, this product blows away the netbook, laptop and desktop markets, encouraging people to slip their “iSlate” into a monitor, or sitting on a conduction pad connected to a wall screen) instead of having a box sitting on their desk. This product just gets more powerful as the decade goes on, and people like the idea less and less of being tied to a desk, and chunky equipment. Techies of all stripes are struck by the similarities to the Star Trek like “Pad” and shun the traditional thinking of what a computer has to look like or be altogether. Dell has a heart attack wondering how they’ll ever beat Apple without going thinner (attempts to find and purchase a company producing paper-computers and fails) and consequently loses enough stock value that Microsoft sees them as a worthy hardware partner for direct purchase.
SixSense Tech Context Bar – On a parallel path, it’s shaped like a candybar, and interfacing with or as your mobile device — it hangs around your neck. In it’s most miniature versions sits in a pocket like a pocket protecter (we’ll call it the Geekbar) in a shirt pocket, and for men or women, a necklace holding a few small boxes with pinhole cameras and a projector inside – this wearable device originally designed by Pranav Mistry at MIT will blow the doors off you can do with a computer. A wearable computer, interfacing constantly with the net and providing you with an information (and unfortunately advertisement) enhanced reality. This enhanced reality will come with a few different versions, one by Apple using a new version of OS X specifically for their “iBar” version (which replaces the outdated iPhone) using OS X 11ER2 (Enhanced Reality Version 2.0), a Linux and Android/Google OS versions delivered through Asus and other clone manufacturers, and another by Microsoft/Dell partership with a new OS by Microsoft called “Interpreter” (Which makes use of gesture control, or PUI — Perceptual User Interface). The SST C-Bar will be as Pranav has envisioned, something very cost effective (Under $300) and bridges the world between your online world and the real one. Complete, low-intensity gesture control is now standard. Instead of having to go find a surface to work on (a white wall or piece of paper) all work can be done in the air with small motions. Popular culture comically refers to people using earlier versions of the device as “Bats” due to the long nature of the original bar (4″) shaped like a baseball bat and the other aspect of people seen waving their arms around vigorously trying to get the early devices to work properly. This product is so revolutionary that it encourages Apple to outfit their mobile devices with SST Context technology wherever possible.
Untethered VR “Sunglasses” followed by Wearable VR Contact Lenses (closer to the end of 2019) - Complimenting the Context bar, you’ll see Wearable VR tools that will help you see what you’re working with, since complete gesture control is now standard. It’s not necessary any longer to wear a glove or tape on your hands. The cameras, tools and processors now support this tech cheaply. VR “glasses” come in prescription form at $29 a pair, while the contact lenses are $599 on the clone market. Before the end of the decade, you no longer have to have an iSlate, computer or any other computer to initiate VR activity with, you can simply look at a target point on a wall and interface with the local systems to get VR access. Coffee shop customers, no longer content with WiFi, encourage shops to double in size to support the “Batty” activities and arm-waving accompanying the new devices and needs of VR users.
Full-Body Med Scanning Platforms - Rounding out the end of the decade, and fueled by a push to keep the insurance industry in check is a government program to offer complete medical scanning of individuals, with the promise that you can’t be disqualified for insurance or denied low cost insurance for any condition) that will tell you everything about a body’s current status. The scanning also stops sort of full DNA testing, but provides after a quick scan an understanding of all the systems currently underperforming on a patient and aids the doctor with potential support for treatment. Actionable doctor visits are now much more rare, as trips to a Platform is as simple as going to a mall or a nearby facility and tests can be “run” by a registered nurse and monitored by a doctor on staff. The design of the product may possibly come from Switzerland where the Biomedical Scanning Center has been researched for some time. Scans are uploaded to your doctor’s office. The platform is comfortable and easy to use. The patient can be standing, sitting or laying down when the scan is administered, but this gadget revolutionizes disease control as well as providing a clear, up to date status on the overall health of the population. This is a moneymaker for everyone, including the insurance industry, who after having to conform to a partial socialization, have now shifted gears to the much more profitable methods of holistic medicine. Gone are the days of people getting sick all the time and complaints of alien probing are way down.
Greenshoes – Popularized by the green energy conservation movement and the fashion industry, many shoes, tight-fitting undershirts and a resurgence of long underpants called “Huggers” all come with micro-gyro-magnet-charging technology, allowing energy to be captured, stored and transferred to mobile devices, iSlates and other gadgetry as you move throughout the day. Stored energy is delivered to syphon pads that sit unobtrusively under a table, chair or desk. This product begins sealing the formerly broken “circle of conservation” which attempts to re-capture “lost” energy through the use of wind farms, lightning recovery systems, wave-action power plants, gratuitous use of solar panels and now magnets and cantilevers.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our little visit to the future and remember to consider those gadgets carefully when you see them. Version 1.0 is always a little “batty”… er… I mean buggy.

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Hey TSA: Why not just sedate the passengers?

Jonathan Firestone — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:30:32 +0000

It’s disturbing what happened with Flight 253 — and reports are that the explosive was extremely powerful. We don’t know the full story yet behind the attack, but as I recall the immediate reaction from international security was to ban use of electronics for the last hour of the flight (forcing people who aren’t bored out of their minds to rent earphones or listen to songs and ads on their horrible in-flight networks or in-flight-potato-tubes), or once again enforcing a no-liquid ban, but really the ultimate solution is even more simple but economically sound than some have suggested (i.e. Banning all Passengers – good idea Mark ;D ) — which would be to put the passengers to sleep.

It’s been suggested before in some movies — and that probably wouldn’t be too bad, until of course the nurse administering the sedative (which might or not be an actual nurse) give the sedative to someone who has a bad reaction… But seriously, I expect this concept to be a Saturday Night Live skit pretty shortly. First class could be a small, private sleeping coffin *ahem* excuse me.. bunk… while the everyone else is just laying on top of each other like cargo to save room. Or in military-style bunks. Imagine the number of people you could put on a plane if they’re laying on the floor of the aircraft strapped down. What a savings in fuel and customer service efforts! No more stewards!

No wait, that would totally ruin the customer experience wouldn’t it?

Please TSA — I know you’re really concerned about security, but there have to be better ways of doing this. Are we learning anything from the Swedes? Or the Germans? Or anyone? I’d love to hear if any customers out there has had any good experiences with security despite how restrictive it’s becoming to just enjoy your flight somewhere. As a guy who loves to travel and would frankly love to go to Australia some day, I’d really like to know if there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

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The world is your plaything. Really. SixSense Tech proves it…

Jonathan Firestone — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:54:10 +0000

Now this is user experience. Quite literally. This is brilliant. Watch as Pranav Mistry takes you through the concept of using a paper “laptop” (and any surface really.) His goal is to bridge the machine and the information we want and crave into the physical world. This will blow your mind. This work is the #1 reason why TED was created. This system is cost effective — $300.00 And you can bridge the worlds. This folks, is the future. It’s things like this that make me stop in my tracks and think further down the particular path of this technology and hundreds of ideas come to my mind that could be done with it. I am stunned and awash with ideas. This is beyond Minority Report’s darkened room and special gloves, and I really want to be working with this tech right now. What also comes to mind is the “Holoband” tech described in the first episode of “Caprica”, where people interact with a virtual world through a holo-band that goes over the eyes like glasses but allow you to visually participate in a holographic world while sitting completely still. Check out the video at 6:26 in the video for Caprica, and watch how she accesses the holo-world. She pulls out a piece of paper and dials her way in. Sound familiar compared with the tech you’ve just seen above? Now you’ve seen two steps into the future. (Nevermind the fact Pattie Maes mentioned a brain implant with this kind of tech. Who needs an external device if you have one in your brain? ;D Okay…three steps…)

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Augmented Reality at the Lego Store

Jonathan Firestone — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Nathan Bowers, a fellow UX Hero for Hire, posted this video about his experience at the Lego Store. First, You hold a box in front of the “Digital Box” kiosk. moving the box around, you’re presented with an image of you holding the box, and the constructed Lego set moving with you as you move the box so you can see the constructed toy in action. Amazing. He’s also absolutely right — this tech should be in use everywhere. Can you imagine holding a suit up to a mirror (or holding it in your hand) and seeing the suit on you virtually? Wow, now that would be wild. Check out the details of his experience here.

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Microsoft dancing into relevancy and Apple’s merry revolution continues.

Jonathan Firestone — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:49:27 +0000

Brad Slavin has posted a few videos to YouTube (as any good Social Media marketer would do ;D) and appears to be promoting the customer experience at the new Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo, CA. Both Engadget and Gizmodo have added their take on it — and all wonderfully snarky comments aside — it’s a good effort at promoting the experience. The fact is, from all the pictures I’ve seen of the new Microsoft store and videos like the in-store dancing you see above — Microsoft’s making an effort to compete on what people perceive as Apple’s turf. When the Gateway stores failed here in DC, and while Dell kiosks in local malls abound, the fact is that Microsoft really does need to show that the experience of owning a PC can be fun, and perhaps no longer as painful as it’s been since the beginnings of the company. The problem with Apple (from what should be Microsoft’s perspective) A Complete Consumer Experience Strategy. When Apple goes to war their strategy is by far the most part complete. And they adapt, at least in a manner quicker than Microsoft. Apple’s all about being able to actually do things with your computer and the software inside. It all starts with the OS. From the OS, Apple achieves a uniform simplicity. What you see is what you get. It’s not hard to do some incredibly powerful things with the system and it’s difficult to break. Apple’s software is easy to learn because all the basics for getting around and doing what you need to do remain the same – it doesn’t matter. Development of software for the Mac demands a similar user experience. Menus have to be the same. Work processes have to be similar, and always familiar. You Can’t Complain About the Hardware Anymore. Apple needed to establish an even playing ground. For years the processors Apple was using were actually superior to the Intel and AMD chips but they couldn’t shake the stigma of being too slow when people talked about Gigahertz. Apple needed to stop the argument and level the playing field. So Apple adopted Intel hardware. The processors Windows and Apple’s OS run on are now the same. What separated these two operating systems was now little more than the code. How it’s written, designed and behaves. And people have been finding a Mac’s behavior to be far superior to the Windows experience. Apple Does Windows, and Runs all things Windows. For years, tools like Parallels, VirtualPC, RealPC and other emulation products have helped people use Windows applications on their Macs, but without the Intel hardware, using a Windows program meant a big processing-hog translation process if you wanted to run the software at the same time as the Mac OS. Add the Intel hardware, problems with processing are solved. In-comes “Boot Camp”, a bootloader that allows an Intel-class operating system like Windows 7, Vista, XP, or Linux to be run unimpeded. Some improvements allow the separate partitions to operate in cooperation. Over time, Parallels (and competitor VMWare Fusion) has been improved to run on the new hardware and the speed gain is significant — and now that Mac does Windows, it’s great. No more barrier. If can run any Mac and any PC app at the same time there’s no little reason to actually own a PC, not if your life’s going to be easier as a result. Ubiquity through Content, Delivery and Function. Apple has learned that despite good software, and fairly good, well designed and consistent hardware, there’s still the question of content, and in the end you need more than just content. You need a way to consume it. What’s the one thing you can’t do without? Your mobile phone. What was the most frustrating thing about your mobile phone? It was difficult to use, and every new feature is just that much more difficult to use and no new device released is quite good enough. Apple offers you an option. A superphone, a smartphone. Something so easy to use, has great applications, and runs on the same philosophy and operating system the Mac operates on. Fantastic. Applications are easy to get (Delivery), inexpensive and can be consumed just like music has been, through iTunes 99 cents at a time. Apple made it painless and somewhat inexpensive to buy the supporting content, be it music, movies or applications. Before you know it you’ve removed pain from your life by adopting an iPhone. Well that makes me as a potential convert pretty receptive to the overall Apple experience. Windows users have started to add it all up. For years the argument has been that up front, a Mac costs too much. The Mac argument has been quite the opposite. We don’t get virus. We don’t get botnets. A Mac is easy, it’s simple. It does what you ask it to do. I can pair it with my phone, I can use my phone like my iPod, heck it is an iPod! Look at the commercials. The “Mac” argument shows through because the song “PC” in sings in the advertisements is pretty common. He gets virii. He freezes all the time. He really doesn’t care about you. He spent a ton of money on advertising when he should have spent it on fixing the XP or Vista operating systems. In the end, if you want a new computer, or you want to end up spending less money over the long term you need to consider if buying a PC is the right thing to be doing. So you pay a little more up front — in the end it’s all easier and far less pain if not painless. The Apple Store: Mystique, Style, Open Support and Proof at your fingertips. Imagine hundreds of Mac faithful on hand daily to tell you how great it is to own one. Imagine a place where you can go into a store and actually touch a Mac in a pleasant, open setting where the isles aren’t arranged like a “Superstore” and knowledgeable people are on hand to openly support you with style, love of the experience and a little knowledge. When you can go in and touch all things Apple in an isolated but open experience lab, you can make the decision yourself if you should join the party, or in this case the larger Apple community. As a result, more people are buying Macs every day, even in this horrible economy. People are finally understanding Apple’s KISS User Experience. The Apple Store makes inroads. PC users are being converted. Conclusion: Microsoft has been running scared as a result. What’s on the way? Apple’s producing a tablet — pretty much everyone agrees with that. This means even more media being produced for it, and even more opportunities for catching someone’s attention and time will be driven to yet another device. One that’s likely to succeed. Apple’s next steps are likely in the content, connectivity/delivery and application vein. Microsoft needs to follow up with an equal stroke of genius or beat them to the punch. It’s time to innovate or get out of the kitchen. According to the way things have been expected to play out, Apple isn’t about to purchase Adobe (but they should), they aren’t about to purchase TiVo (but they should), and they aren’t about to purchase AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile (but they should). Acquiring these companies would put some new corners on the revolutionary hat that Apple’s been wearing, and solidify the overall value proposition of owning Apple products. Adobe’s product quality and a solid position providing the tools people use to generate all the media people are consuming on the Net (and TV), TiVo’s killer-timeshifting content app for collecting the results still has incredible reach and is still relevant. Also, adopting a Telecom network, bringing down the costs for delivery and establishing a stronger network would normalize and potentially fix the things that hurt Adobe, TiVo and AT&T the most, customer service and consistency, delivery and solutions. But wait! There’s more! Microsoft sensibly fights back. Windows 7. Windows 7 is proof that Apple’s way has won the day, but is it enough? We’ll see. The Windows 7 OS design has been seen as so much like Apple’s that pundits are commenting that Microsoft’s “ripped off the OS X dock”, and other features of the OS have become very similar. The jury is still out as to how robust the experience is. “It’s my idea and I’m a PC” Advertising Campaign. The last few commercials from Microsoft were a mess. Nothing even close to the brilliance found in the latest round — where commercial actors talk about this great idea they had and how Microsoft heard their ideas and turned them into Windows 7. They’re interesting, and even if they’re contrived at all, they still try convey that Microsoft is listening, and they are responding with something that makes sense, and it’s a no-nonsense approach. The Microsoft Store. Replicate the Apple style. Set up some “open” support and set up a place where PC users will feel welcome. A place where people can stay in there all day just like people do at the Apple store. Where a PC user doesn’t feel like a pariah when it gets sick, and everyone feels your pain when it does. So Microsoft is embracing community building models. Imagine that. Well as you can see from the video this blog post leads in with, someone’s trying to have some fun with the effort. However contrived. What comes next?

The “M-Phone”? The “Zune Phone?” Probably, if they can ever get over their “Sidekick” problem.
Normalization of application behaviors? Likely. They will have to encourage developers to normalize their approach for UX and conform more closely to key operating system expectations.
Would Microsoft buy Verizon? That would be spectacular for them. The nation’s largest most complete telecom and Mobile solutions?

Conclusion: Microsoft is attempting to become relevant. They can no longer rest on their laurels of being the most-used OS on the planet. Most used is not equal to popular, and it is nice to see they finally understand what that means. Microsoft has been the tin can for too long, will it have a heart? Will it innovate? We shall see. Apple for their end is not sitting still.

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