jasmo's WebLog : PDC

Streaming to your hearts content!

jasmo — Sun, 23 Nov 2003 01:12:00 GMT

This is cool - streaming audio and slides (and video from demos) is up for anyone to peruse. It's weird hearing my voice, of course (and a bit humbling), but it is pretty cool to be able to basically review any of the PDC sessions. You can check it out here.

It takes some time to load a session (I thought it had hung or simply given up) but it does work! So, give it a try (and some patience).

I know it's been some time (rapidly closing in on a month) since I've posted, but this is not because I don't care! In fact, I fully expect to think up something worthwhile to say in the near future. Gotta keep up my reputation and all...

And the PDC... is over. Kinda.

jasmo — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 06:41:00 GMT

So, it's been lights out here for the last week - the PDC hit us hard - from meeting with tons of people, to doing talks and demos, to just trying to find a restaurant, it was a whirlwind of... well, something. Basically, so much happened and there are so many stories to tell I simply don't know where to begin.

I did want to update and say, "Hey, I'm still alive!" I'll try and write something interesting and detailed soon (as is my particular style, with rambling involved). Feel free to ping me with requests. ;)

That said, I heartily recommend watching the vast blogscape, the news articles and the many many comments people have made about Longhorn (as well as Whidbey and Yukon) - it's pretty staggering, and I think over the comings months we'll start to hear a lot more about what works well, what doesn't, and what we need to do to make you all very happy. Phew!

Something funny

jasmo — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 08:36:00 GMT

I'm blogging from the Birds of a Feather blogging discussion.

I just wanted to say that.

Birds of a Feather: Blogging

jasmo — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 04:33:00 GMT

I think tonight I'll be going to the Birds of a Feather session, Weblogging: The Future of Conversational Software. Not sure what it holds in store, but it looks interesting. If you are blogging the PDC, it's worth attending, I'm sure.

Other random tidbits: Network access got way better later in the day. Seems they sorted out the kinks. Also, traffic started to improve to the UX Lounge, but it's clear that we're a) undiscoverable, b) hard to get around and in to talk to people. That's terrible for user experience, and several folks have been working to 're-shape' the area. The other thing is we've got a little stand that identifies the area as "Client." We'll get that fixed tomorrow (we're the Aero folks!).

The sessions were packed today - I spent some time walking around the hallways and I'm simply impressed. Every single room was packed beyond belief, people standing inside, people standing outside holding the doors in to watch, and people standing, sitting, laying around the big screen TVs outside each talk to follow along.

That probably means we've got your attention.

Exhaustion

jasmo — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:43:00 GMT

We just made it through BillG's keynote and things seem to have come off smoothly. The team is pretty exhausted - including myself. I'm actually back at the hotel, reading some blogs about what we just showed - we'll see what people have to say by the end of the day!

Early comments (such as from Scott Hanselman) seem to be fairly positive. Maybe we've got something people want. :)

Nap time.

There's always a catch...

jasmo — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 21:01:00 GMT

Of course, there's always a catch. Apparently, the pretty horrendous fires happening near Los Angeles have caused visibility to basically be zero for the local airports - making it dangerous for planes to land safely.

I'm sure the attendees on their way or currently on the way are a bit upset by this setback. We've even got some of our demo folks in the air or on the way - and we're currently routing around, finding alternate airports, etc... We're hoping all the attendees will make it, and that we will clear up stuff soon.

In the course of typing this (and calling and answering, IMing and emailing) we've found some hope - sounds like the FAA is moving folks around and will make stuff fit together to get the afternoon flights all in on time. Phew! We'll see how things go.

Oh yeah...

jasmo — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:58:00 GMT

Since I was able to post, it should be clear I made it to LA. Already got some dinner planned, then meeting some developers later for drinks (let me know if you're interested!).

Supposedly we're even gonna go start setting up tonight - at the very least, spending all day tomorrow on it. Oh boy.

Rambling at 30,000+ Feet

jasmo — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:52:00 GMT

I’m writing this entry some 30,000 feet above sea level, having just crossed the border into California . In a little while (well, somewhere around an hour and a half) we’ll descend into the Los Angeles area, where the pilot tells me I can expect 90 degree weather.

Fantastic.

If my battery holds out, I can write a proper entry that may be of further interest to you folks. I mentioned a while back a post about video gaming and UX, and I think it’s appropriate to dig into here now. The following is a bit of a rambling set of thoughts, but it should provide an interesting discussion nonetheless. There’s a lot more to say, but this will help get the ball rolling.

At the most basic level, videogames are like any other piece of software. They construct a specific experience for users, have a set of goals and needs, and are built up by bits of code that have things like semi-colons, parentheses and the odd dollar sign. They also share a large heritage with the world of Entertainment – movies, books, and the like. In straddling between the two, videogames give us a great opportunity to recognize that in fact, what makes them entertaining is part of what makes software usable and even enjoyable. That’s right: your software experience shares a bunch of things in common with the latest rap album, art-house flick, or novel.

Now, clearly, that’s not a generality I am going to apply to the networking stack in Longhorn – but it is something that applies to all my experiences, including the ones networking exposes. That’s a bit abstract, let’s get to some examples.

I’ve been recently playing my way through the game Splinter Cell again. One of the things I noticed as I took on the role of Sam Fischer, super-spy extraordinaire, was how I became physically affected by my experience. My hands got a little sweaty and my attention was completely on the game (I missed my wife calling my name!). This is just a bit of software, running on a bit of hardware, and yet I’m actually having these subconscious reactions to it. That’s a pretty neat trick.

This isn’t any different than the moment you hold your breath in the big action flick (“oh my gosh is he going to make it!”) or bust out into tears (“But he loves her!”). In those cases, it’s all visual and aural (let’s leave the context of theatre out of the discussion for now, but it matters as well), and in the videogame case we added in a controller which adds another tactile level of immersion (and in my lucky case, with force feedback).

The take away is: it’s possible to engage people on an emotional level without having to actually put them into situations or have it be “real.” I am not actually a super-spy (as far as you know), yet when I pick up the controller, I am literally playing in Sam’s world. With software in general, we have this ability. In fact, we already do affect people in emotional way today.

A simple example should suffice to explain. Ever tried to find some function or feature in a piece of software you use? You know it’s there, but you just can’t seem to find it. Maybe they named it something else? Maybe there’s some system to it you haven’t figured out (“What if I hold down the Control key?”). It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, and it produces cases of “computer rage.” People scream at their computer, they make not-so-friendly gestures at it, and generally unleash their emotions on it (or worse, on someone else – we’re human after all).

That’s software producing an emotional response. It’s not a good response of course, but it is one, and powerful at that. This alone points out just how much we can have an affect on users. The challenge is to make that an intentionally produced reaction (much like reducing an audience to peals of laughter with well-timed comedy) and a positive one at that.

Ok, so how do videogames fit into this? Videogames help bridge a lot of our understanding between the world of Entertainment and what we do in software. Let’s take the Splinter Cell example again. Clearly, as made-up entertainment, it puts you in highly unlikely and highly unreal situations. At the same time, it creates an atmosphere of tension, making every move seem meaningful, of drawing the user in and really making them react to the situation, rather than sit back and think about it critically as some bits running. (Users typically don’t do this, even when they are working on something and thinking critically about it).

I believe a big part of this comes from the sandbox model of game play used successfully in many games – think Splinter Cell and Knights of the Old Republic recently, or Mario64 and its predecessors (even Doom). At a basic level, the model here is: create an environment for the user where the rules are easy to grasp, failure is a learning experience and not a dead end, and the environment provides enough interesting challenges to captivate the player. For those who’ve ever played Mario64, you can certainly appreciate the first hour you spend jumping and running around before actually completing any stages – it was that eye-opening and fun.

This applies to software equally. In Windows, we have an environment for users. Putting aside how successful it is at these things, it is designed to easy to grasp, to have failure not be an entire dead end, and to provide interesting things to do. Examples are the task model to help users find tasks and do them (and it’s consistent across the experience for the most part), the Recycle Bin provides one aspect of making failure not be a dead end (deleted the file? Just get it back), and those same tasks provide a set of interesting things to perform (same for the Start Menu).

In each of your applications, you do the same thing. Now, it is a little more complex obviously than a game with 3 buttons. In fact, the challenge we have in modern software on PCs is managing the 157 buttons – and balancing that with the sandbox above. But when I’m in a given application, I have the context of the sandbox that is Windows, as well as the context of the application itself. This can change depending on the type of application I’m in and how effective it is. For example, in an editor app, it tends to be sets of controls around one thing I’m working with – and I generally expect most of those controls to work the same. When I’m in a navigation-based application, or perhaps surfing the Web, I have a different set of expectations. The Web, in fact, is absolutely fantastic at following these rules and applying them – and it’s one of the reasons, I believe, for it’s continued success – easy to pick up and keep going. Imagine if every website I went to had 100% different conventions or did not obey the basic rules about things like links. (Just to digress a minute: this happens a lot more than I’d like actually. Ever gone to a site then hit the back button and it doesn’t take you back far enough and so you just reload the same page? How annoying).

So that turned into a bit more on other things we can learn from videogames, but I want to bring it back to the emotion point. Emotion is a powerful part of who and what we are as individuals. It’s also a lens through which all experiences we have are filtered. For example, if you are already in a bad mood and something goes awry on your computer, you are not going to be a happy camper. At the same time, when you succeed at doing something on your computer (particularly if it was something you thought might be difficult), you will be quite pleased with yourself – even proud.

This is nothing new of course. Emotional design in products is a relatively old concept (if it’s had a few names over the years) and is well practiced by those most experienced at supporting a particular brand. (We’ll talk another day about how emotional design can be financially rewarding). But it’s something we generally do poorly in software – either not recognizing it or not knowing what to do with it.

Videogames come in here. While not all videogames are useful to look at (let’s be honest, a lot of games suck – but it has nothing to do with the genre), they do generally show us where software has been used to tell a story (and I mean more than just text here). This continuum, of piecing together the actions a user does in front of a computer (or game device) is critical in the general software world as well – it’s how we maintain and protect the experiences we want to build (and thus the emotions we want to evoke).

Plane has started to descend and they’ve asked me to put all my electronic devices away – we’ll have to end this for now.

I’ll try and post within the next couple of days some ideas on how to make good experiences happen, and evoke good emotions. For those at the PDC, I recommend you start by attending Hillel Cooperman ’s talk, “The New Windows “Longhorn” User Experience: Get Users to Fall in Love with Your Software” and visiting the UX Lounge.

I’ll see you there.

Let's get this party started

jasmo — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 07:29:00 GMT

Well, it’s just about time to head to Los Angeles . I’m flying out tomorrow, spending Sunday setting up, and getting excited to meet each and every one of you. Once that happens, the information flow will go from slow, slow trickle to incredibly fast, rushing river.

My primary goal, aside from getting to meet folks, chatting about user experience and storage in Longhorn is to get feedback on what we show and talk about – literally, what are we going to do differently based on what we hear?

A big part of the PDC is to learn what is going right. We’re super jazzed about that and obviously we expect a lot of it is going to be well received. But beyond that, I really want to know what it is we need to do to belt it out of the park. And that can mean changing plans – doing something different, doing something new, or even doing something less. This helps to keep us honest, but also serves to simply make sure we’re building the absolute best product we can. Therefore I invite you to make sure we know not only what you think is right about what we are doing, but also what's wrong!

I promise the blog will get to some more interesting UX-focused posts soon. Maybe I’ll write something on the plane.

Visions of PDC danced in their head...

jasmo — Tue, 21 Oct 2003 16:12:00 GMT

Jeremy recently blogged about a discussion we've had that relates to Longhorn, the new storage system, and what my team has been up to. Of course, since he's so willing to rip me off, feel free to go read his post, then come back and report here and we'll just steal all his comments away. :) I think the topic is worthy of further discussion, so I'll try and put that into written word at some point. Right now, as you can see from my updates, I'm clearly very busy.

That said, while Jeremy refers you to CLI323, make sure you also hit up his PDC Panel on Thursday (it's worth it - seriously, I'm missing it and I'm a bit annoyed about that), and even make it to our UX Lounge.

Apparently I'm also at some Ask the Experts function, something I find highly amusing due to the fact that I am clearly no expert. I'll be playing at one at the PDC, I guess - but secretly, I hope to learn just as much from all of you. That is supposed to sound cheesy, really.

Back to the mad rush...

Hype and Hope - the PDC!

jasmo — Fri, 17 Oct 2003 07:19:00 GMT

PDC preparation continues to move into high gear, and the excitement is building. The hype machine, of course, cannot help but go into overdrive – people are simply so jazzed about this show (internally and externally) that it’s good we’re going to get it done and over with soon. I’ve never seen us so jazzed internally about this – the real issue is going to be the reception we get – will we have enough information, will we get everyone excited, will people see the basic value of the platform we are building for the industry? Time will tell, and I’m nervous as heck about it.

Work also continues on preparing slides – the usual you might expect – and we keep getting asked the same thing: “What 3 points do you want people to walk away with?” We then have to put that in perspective of each day – “Ok, and how does that stand out, or resonate with, the other 5 sessions they attend that day” – working out to some roughly 18 “must-get” bullet points.

Of course, internally we also talk about the different profiles of developers out there and how we make sure to get on each level (for example, you focus on different things provided to the hardcore C++ girl versus the VB.NET guy). As a UX person, I find this incredibly comfortable – I basically get to understand our developers much better, and then think deeply about how they will perceive what we are doing, and what’s most valuable. Obviously, that VB.NET guy isn’t going to care much about some low-level APIs – he’s going to be much more interested in the higher level capabilities – that help him do his job better, faster and easier. And so on and so forth. What’s really interesting is then bridging the gap – because we’re all multifaceted, you even have the developer who’s real strong on networking and likes to dig in deep, but fundamentally wants the simplest way to build UI – how do we make that happen, and how do we not just dump them in one silo (i.e., “You are a C++ developer, don’t look at that other thing.”). The .NET Framework helps us a ton here (with all the language support) but a key point will be making sure we can intelligently talk to all these points…

And the best part is, we’ll surely know in real-time as we get feedback in L.A. from people there, and very likely, the blogs that will be happening daily (even hourly!) like mine.

I’m very anxious for that in particular, as my blog can become less vague and speculative (i.e. “gosh I hope you like the PDC”) and much more concrete. I’m also genuinely interested in talking to the folks who will be there, and posting more discussion based on that.

Time to get back to work.

Random morsels

jasmo — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 17:53:00 GMT

I'm such a slacker. I haven't posted in days!

I actually was writing up a post about video games and user experience, but I failed to post it because of the overall level of pretentiousness. If I can clean that up to make an actual point I may post it soon.

Paolo Marcucci's session browser for the PDC seems to have gone RTM over the weekend (or technically, RTW). He's been dealing with performance issues, and then made some tradeoffs of footprint vs. load times. I think he's gone the right way (at least with what he has to work with). Check it out.

Looks like we're coming into the homestretch leading to PDC. Lots of work remaining to be done on the slides (and lots of scratching of heads and asking, "Well, what 3 things will people take away from this?" and so on) as well as getting demos up and running to show off. I'm particularly giddy on that point, and I'll actually be doing one of the demos in the CLI323 talk.

I'm starting to drink the Kool-aid myself - in fact, the only thing I'm not excited about is Los Angeles, but I'm sure it'll have it's moments too. But here I'll get to meet tons of developers, talk with folk about our work in Longhorn, and very likely get a ton of feedback on it. Now, if I can only get some sleep before we get there...

PDC & Intrigue!

jasmo — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 07:38:00 GMT

Alright, looks like I'm finally set for a hotel. I have one booked, and I'm working on actually setting something else up that would be cheaper for Microsoft and closer to the convention center - but at the very least, I have a place to sleep! It's an unbelievably good stress relief (sleeping in doorways in L.A. was not my idea of a good time).

I've also started to work out all the various people I wanted to catch up with and so on at the PDC. In addition in participating in talk CLI 323 (which is shaping up nicely!) I'll be in the UX Lounge (or so I'm lead to believe) where I'll be able to chat on that topic as well as many others. I'll post here what times I'll actually be around. As that usually gets changed at the last minute, expect to see something up on the 26th or so. There will also be a ton of other great user experience folks to chat to, many very knowledgeable on the topics the PDC is going to be about... More on that later.

It looks like people were fairly interested in my "quick and dirty" usability post - I think I'll add some more of that type of commentary in the near future. As usual, I'll try and keep it relevant and entertaining (of course, I have no idea if the first was...).

PDC Tidbits

jasmo — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 06:33:00 GMT

Paolo Marcucci has made great progress on his PocketPC PDC app. I'm quite excited about it, despite not having a PocketPC... I'm hoping if I link him enough, I'll get one. I mean, wouldn't you want that kind of endorsement? I'll be sending Paolo some thoughts on what I'd like to see here, feel free to do the same. Hopefully we'll get something that meets all my needs. :)

As PDC approaches, the excitement and fear is growing palpable - will people love what we have to show? Will they be impressed? Will they be as excited as we are? I'm looking forward to meeting all these developers and seeing what they think of my work - and engaging one on one with them. Walter and Jeremy, for example, are chomping at the bit to spill the beans - a bit of this is pride, but a huge part is just saying, "hey... whaddya think? are we solving your needs?" My personal interest largely comes from the first unveiling of what I've been working on for 2+ years, and the feedback we'll get. To be clear, that means I (and Microsoft at large) am interested in what we need to change, as well as what works well and should be further brought forward. This is as close as I've been to having a kid, and I'm proud of this baby.

If we're doing a good job, that means this blog will likely get more interesting. If not, well... Maybe it will be back to the dungeons for me. :)

Oh, and thanks to the folks who've offered me hotel rooms in L.A. - Thanks! But I'm sure I can manage on my own. I appreciate the offers.

PDC Travel

jasmo — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 23:51:00 GMT

I'm all set for the PDC - but I don't have a hotel yet! Early last week, all the MS setup places were booked (at least for one night they all were) and I've been working with our travel folk to figure out where I can get a room. I'm there Saturday through Thursday, so it looks like it may even be split between two places. No word yet, of course. Should know more Monday.

Maybe I should just get a big ol' RV and camp out in front of the conference center? I could dress it up like the Monster House one. On the other hand, do I really need a place to sleep? It's L.A.after all, there's always something to do or see, right?

There's a number of interesting talks originating from the Windows Shell team at PDC. I'm planning to make all of them (when not hanging out in the UX Lounge, etc), this will be our first big presence in many years. I'm curious as well to the folk we will be seeing - what's going to be on their minds? How will they react to what we're doing, and what we're offering? October promises to be quite the waiting game.