IE8 Web Accelerators and Web Slices add another mechanism for your customers to interact with you in the way they choose, from where they are.
This video describes how ASOS have achieved this:
They have made it easy for their customers to search for products from where they currently are, they can easily store their favourites and be notified of any changes, and finally they can use well understood and accessible search methods to locate products.
All of this provides a better service to customers, and sells more products for ASOS.
A while ago I posted about the value of exposing your business capabilities as services in order that others could use them, and in effect sell your products for you. Well Tesco.com have done it. Take a look at how to use them https://www.lansleytech.com/tescoapiweb/
Here's a big picture that I created a while ago to describe our Software + Services strategy:
I often hear of scenarios targeting the Surface unit that I think are actually appropriate for any multi-touch device. My view of Surface is that its optimum scenarios include object recognition and collaboration.
So, if an object such as a mobile phone or an identity card is dropped on a Surface unit, the software on Surface can interact with it. For example, using an identity card to identify and authenticate me before being allowed to use an application.
Another scenario is the support for multiple people to use the same application and device to collaborate. A good example here is if a sales consultant is working on configuring a car with a customer. Both parties can interact with the visual of the car and add different options to see how it looks.
As an aside, it's these scenarios that both designers and developers have to pay particular attention to when thinking about the design and the user interaction of their software for Surface. Primarily because these are capabilities and use cases that are generally new. For example, if multiple people are using the same application on the same device there is an opportunity for one user to impact the other users experience.
For me multi-touch is incredibly interesting, but something that other devices and platforms can support.
Or, 'Delivering Software plus Services (S+S)'
A while ago a small group of people in Microsoft started an incubation project code named ‘Motion’. Principally Motion is a methodology that establishes *what* a business does, and not how it does it. It does this by following a well defined methodology. It so happens that these capabilities, things that describe what the business does, map quite nicely on to what services a company might need to run its business.
The project has moved on. Now Microsoft Consultancy Services have a formal offering that not only analyses a business’s capabilities, but creates the relevant models that that describe the business. These models are exposed in Visual Studio. In other words, a customer gets their business modeled in Visual Studio which they can start developing against.
I think this is a fantastic product, and offers a business a good accelerator into a service based architecture. It also offers good value as every business has over 70% of the same services, meaning that capabilities and models that Services already have can be reused. Incidentally an average business has between 1000 and 2000 capabilities. This results in a huge delivery for the customer in a short timeframe and at a fraction of the cost.
Have you spotted what some toys now include? They have a tag that has a Web address and a secret code. Once at the Web site you can register your toy by entering the code, you then gain access into previously secret content.
If the toy is a doll then that secret content might be a virtual world, in which your actual doll exists. This delivers a very captivating experience whether you’re a child or an adult.
A number of years ago Microsoft did something similar with Barney. Having bought a physical toy Barney he could interact with a video playing on the TV or a computer game. I'm not sure why this is no longer for sale. Probably down to demand. This surprises me.
I'm sure there are plenty of other products and scenarios that this makes sense for...
Simply put, Web sites probably support two functions: one as a content provider, and the other as a channel that allows your users to interact with you or each other.
Arguably the first describes the original Web; a collection of sites that publish content for users to consume.
The second type is probably most concerned with taking 'bricks and mortar' business to the Web. This could be for a number of reasons including reaching a new market that the original business could not.
Of course most sites support both types of functionality. But is this difference taken into account when creating the user experience for the site?
What are notifications? My definition is small, timely, useful and usually actionable pieces of information that interest or enrich a receiver’s experience.
Because my definition centres on the person receiving them, there are other attributes of notifications that are important. For example the recipient needs to have full control. They need to be able to customise where the information is sent and to turn it on or off as required.
How would you feel towards the company that you'd booked a flight or a holiday with if they informed you via a notification of a traffic problem on route to the airport, or a flight delay in time for you to take action?
Notifications are an excellent and relatively 'cheap' way to vastly improve a customer’s experience, and increase the value that any company delivers.
The interesting discussion about Gadgets for me is not a technical one, but a business one. My view is simply: If someone chooses to install a Gadget on the Vista Sidebar, they are dedicating a piece of their desktop to you. That can be valuable.
Therefore the perception of a Gadget is that it 'belongs' to the person whose desktop it resides on, as opposed to the company that it represents or is connected to. Meaning that what that Gadget does has to be useful to the end user, rather than only serve the company.
One of the useful scenarios to the end user is for a Gadget to receive notifications. I'll post an entry on notifications shortly.
Of course while an end user may have the view that the Gadget 'belongs' to them they recognise quite clearly that a company's Web site 'belongs' to the company, and visitors are comfortable with being treated with that in mind, e.g. marketing and ads. An interesting discussion is how a Gadget and a Web site can work together. One serving the end user, the other the shop window to the company.
How many grumpy developers do you know?
Some developers continually ask questions in an attempt to understand what's required and to identify what could go wrong. Others seem to ask fewer questions, and don't appear to be as preoccupied with exceptions.
The perception is that one 'type' of developer is constantly placing barriers in the way of progress, whereas the other is very positive. Of course each 'type' wants to do the best job they can. What's interesting is the perception that their approach has on the people they are speaking with.
Is the difference down to early training? Is it difficult for developers that were initially trained to use a waterfall based approach not to think in a certain way. Whereas those that have only ever used agile approaches are more excepting to move forward into the unknown.
Of course it's also likely that those developers that were originally trained to use waterfall based methodologies are older than those that have always used agile. So it could simply be down to age...
I've been thinking a lot about User Experience (UX) recently. How it's changed, why it's important, what the technology options are, ...
The Microsoft platform offers so much choice, it can be confusing. So here's an attempt to offer some simplification and clarity:
Web
This is ASP.NET. A very simple, and mature model. Use it for predominantly server based web content.
Rich Client
There are two technology option here: Windows Forms (WinForms) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WinForms offer a mature model that is used predominantly within the enterprise. WPF is arguably a more powerful model that enables a greater degree of control for both the designer and the developer. In fact the architectural approach means that the designer and developer can work in a way that hasn't been possible before.
Hybrid
This is Silverlight. Conceptually the combination of the other two. Although it should be noted that Silverlight offers a subset of the capabilities found in WPF. It's about client applications running within the browser. Because the code runs on the client the perceived performance can be better.
Hopefully the above simplification makes the choice more obvious.
What business scenarios does the DeepZoom technology support? Here are some I can think of:
Showing additional information
Showing additional, relevant information in situ without having to link off to another page. A great example of this is a car ad on the front page of a virtual newspaper. Looking at the newspaper page the ad looks like any normal ad that you’d find in a newspaper, maybe positioned at the bottom right hand corner of the page. As you zoom in more information becomes visible, until you can see the full model range, and the specification and options of each car.
Collection of images
The idea here is to be able to show a collection of things in one page. A real example would be the collection of rock memorabilia that Hard Rock has. You can see this in action here http://memorabilia.hardrock.com Try clicking on the image and pressing 'ctrl v' to go directly to a nice easter egg that you’d probably otherwise struggle to find J
Quality matters
When the quality and detail of the product is important to show. Aston Martin demonstrated an example of this in this years Mix keynote. They showed how a car can be viewed as it should be on the web, http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=KYN0801 . The demo starts 1:48:23 in, with the actual DeepZoom part at 1:51:20. DeepZoom is used to zoom in through the window in order to see the quality and detail of the material used, down to the stitches.
A great example of how to take a very strong quality brand and move it to the web.
Are there anymore...
I hosted a micro-presentation session at the Microsoft AIC. If you’re not familiar with this format of presentation, they’re very simple. 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, the slides to be configured to change automatically.
In addition be being good fun, I’m convinced it’s a great format to convey a wealth of information in a short period of time.
I believe the benefits are manifold. The format encourages the presenter to distil the content and be really clear on the key messaging. The audience doesn’t have to sit through a long and tiring presentation. Even if they’re not interested in the subject they only have 6 minutes and 40 seconds before it’s finished; and they're likely to take something away.
I’m convinced that this format should be used more in business...
I seem to be having more conversations about the different version of Silverlight and their capabilities.
My view is quite simple: I have not yet come across a business scenario that Silverlight 1.0 cannot deliver against (excluding those where Digital Rights Management (DRM) is required).
Of course the development models and runtimes are a different conversation. But if the question if about delivering against a business requirement, then the chances are Silverlight 1.0 can deliver what’s required...
Simon Thurman
When Web Services as we know them today were in their infancy I started to work with a customer that sold a market leading product. Their product was successful because of the rich supporting data source that helped their clients make intelligent decisions. But another differentiator was the willingness of the product supplier to customise the product to meet their clients specific requirements. Whilst this delivered enhanced value to the client and led to easier integration into existing processes, it increased both cost and delivery timescales for the product supplier. The level of customisation also created other issues including complicating maintenance and versioning.
So, the product supplier decided to take a service based approach. This involved identifying the different capabilities of the existing monolithic product, extracting them and creating a service for each. When the entire product functionality could be delivered by a collection of services, the services were orchestrated back together to in essence deliver the same capabilities of the original monolithic product.
Of course this approach led to a much more agile approach to customisation, which cost less and could be delivered in a more timely manner. But what was both fascinating and unexpected, was the realisation that the smaller granular capabilities delivered by the services were of interest to a broader spectrum of customers within new industry sectors.
So by taking a service based approach the product supplier not only increased its agility and reduced costs, it also increased the applicability of its product to new markets.
Simon Thurman
