In 1998, I began using HTML prototyping as a way to capture the interaction design for the projects I was leading (while I may have described them as a ‘web app’ at the time, I certainly wouldn’t now…).   Now mind you, CSS1 was barely out the door at that point, and it was all table all the time.  Despite that, I had some great creative developers working with me, and we were able to iterate very quickly.  This experience was transformational for me - it’s one thing to develop a concept map as a way to structure your thinking, it’s another thing to develop an HTML prototype to show the interactions your proposing.

Fast forward 5 years, I’d gotten really good at making Dreamweaver behave the way I wanted it to in a prototyping environment.  I’d also gotten really good at getting teams on board, and getting clients to focus on the interaction, not the fact that they’re looking at a bunch of gray boxes.

Once  I decided I wanted to move back to CA, and managed to convince my wife of that as well, I started looking at the typical players here.  I settled at a large eCommerce retailer here, and started my work.  What amazed me was even though I was responsible for the most ‘application-like’ portion of the organization (I was responsible for digital photos, (digital) music, books, and (digital) Videos), the organization used Visio as a way to represent the layout of the page.  This created problems:

1. In order to accurately represent the states, transitions, etc, it meant that *massive* documents were required 
2. rent a car bulgariaCapturing animations was extremely difficult and describing behavior is ambiguous
3. Review of the document is very difficult, long process.  Additionally, the review is prone to error, misunderstanding and requires the participants to imagine how the final experience will ‘feel’

All this is compounded by the process that many firms use down the line from the wireframe:

‘On paper’ this looks like it makes sense in the same way that waterfall methodology makes sense on paper.  The fundamental problem with it is that 

• You like getting your hands ‘dirty’ to build great experiences
• You’re deep with competitive technologies (Flash, Flex, AIR, AJAX libraries), like learning new things (e.g., WPF, Silverlight, Expression Studio)
• You like meeting lots of new people

This job will have some travel, so be prepared.  Your job will be to build or integrate with design communities across the west coast (read: conferences, IxDA, BayCHI and the like).  When you’re not doing that, you’ll be working with our agency partners to help them with  readiness, training and support.

Of all the companies I’ve worked for (and I’ve loved some of the places where I’ve worked), Microsoft is, by far, the best. 

If you’re interested or just want to have a conversation about the role, send me a resume at william (dot) tschumy (at) microsoft (dot) com

Job Description below:

The User Experience Evangelist (UXE) position is situated within the Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) business within the US subsidiary. This position will be located in the West Region and will cover the entire West Region from the Southern California geography. The overall mission of the DPE is to secure platform adoption, drive satisfaction and revenue growth through evangelism, community engagement, relationship marketing and a vibrant solutions ecosystem.

As an UXE, you are Microsoft’s representative to the designer/agency community helping to win the hearts and minds regarding the Microsoft platform. The notion of “User Experience” lies at the center of Microsoft’s continued long term success as a platform company by enabling our partners and customers to build rich, immersive, compelling end-user experiences that stand-out and differentiate them from the competitive offerings. The “creative professional” audience is a critical element of the overall development process. In order to realize improved software UX, designers will need to be empowered to design and build the best possible content in the most productive and efficient collaborative environment together with professional developers.

The UXE is a role with the mission of engaging with the broad community of designers and influential’s driving excitement around design related technologies for both the standards-web and Windows platforms. This position is a great opportunity to build perception of Microsoft in the design space and to create usage of Microsoft’s platform and tools technologies through breadth marketing programs and depth engagement with key accounts.

UXE’s must be able to talk about both design technologies in-depth and the business value of great design in software industry. UXE’s must be able to speak compellingly and enthusiastically to many audiences within the design ecosystem, including designers and production artists, producers and client/services managers, as well as creative directors and general management. UXE’s must also be able to engage in technical dialog with more traditional “development” organizations such as ISVs and IT departments, where the art and business of “design” is less understood and developed.

Passion for design and the creative process, technical skills in design and web development technologies, curiosity, and exceptional communication and presentation skills are required.

Responsibilities:

· Able to engage and build relationship with designers including participating in online and offline designer communities, engaging with influential’s and third party communities.

· Able to deliver and articulate effective audience-appropriate presentations/ demonstrations with designer oriented content to both small and large audiences

· Convey a compelling and convincing case for Microsoft technologies vs. the competition

· Extend reach in the designer community by partnering with Audience Marketing.

· Win the hearts of Designers to build positive perception of Microsoft with designers and Microsoft products.

Qualifications:

· Experience with professional design tools, the market and customers for these tools, or as a professional designer/developer in the interactive and web design space is strongly preferred.

· Production experience as part of a team building/delivering web and interactive content and applications, either in a creative or technical capacity.

· 3 - 5 years related experience:

· Demonstrated expertise with products such as: Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dream weaver, Director, and other professional design tools for photography, video, 3d, animation, and layout is a requirement.

· Technical skills should include web standards expertise (HTML, CSS, XML, AJAX), and interactive programming with languages eg. JavaScript, Actionscript, Lingo, or Flex.

· Passionate about rich internet applications, web design, interactive design, and user experience in all mediums from software to consumer products

· Individuals may come from either a Technical or Creative background if they possess reasonable capacity in the other.

· Flexibility in regards to work schedule and travel

· Strong communication and negotiation skills

· Solid understanding of the competitive products and how to differentiate Microsoft from its competitors

In order to support Firefox 3, websites built using the Silverlight 1.0 Sivlerlight.js file must upgrade that file to the latest version. In addition to supporting Firefox 3, the latest version of the file also adds several new features including the ability to automatically refresh the browser once the user installs Silverlight. You can learn about all of the new features in the readme file.

If you have already updated your website to use the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Silverlight.js file or you instantiate Silverlight using the ASP.Net Silverlight control then no further action is needed. Otherwise, to obtain the latest version of Silverlight.js please visit the Silverlight.js MSDN Code Gallery Web site:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlightjs

For most pages, the upgrade process will only require that you replace the current Silverlight.js file with the new version. However, the latest version of Silverlight.js removes several deprecated members from the file’s object model:

o Silverlight.ua

o Silverlight.available

o Silverlight.detectUserAgent

o Silverlight.supportedUserAgent

If your website uses any of these members then you can find workarounds in the readme file associated with this release.

You can also check out this blog post from my friend and colleague, Tim H.

Today, InXile launched the redesigned LineRider.com, exclusively powered by Silverlight2 and Windows Live Services.

Line Rider is a casual gaming site with between 1.5 & 2M Monthly Unique users.  In addition to the old, Flash based game, they have also just launched console versions of their game for the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3.  In Late May, they began a contest with McDonald’s, supported by a nation-wide television ad buy.  Check out the nationally broadcast commercial here.

WR DPE began working with Line Rider several months ago, converting application environment from LAMP to Windows 2008 / SQL Server 2008.  In late April, I was approached by Line Rider’s Director of Online Businesses to explore a Silverlight port because of usability problems inherent with the Flash version of the game.

Over the course of 2 weeks, we developed a scope of work that included substantially enhancing the social aspects of the game through integrating Windows Live Messenger, Contacts and LiveID.  You can now save your game

tracks locally or in the cloud, send those track to your friends via Live Messenger, and chat with friends while in the game.  Once we established scope, we engaged Cynergy Systems (Winners of the Phizzpop Design Challenge) to design and build the application.  This was a roughly 6 week engagement.

Line Rider, powered by Silverlight2 and Windows Live Services launched today!

Silverlight

· To learn more about Silverlight visit the Silverlight Community site. This site includes tons of tutorials, videos, getting started information, samples and a showcase where you can see the latest sites created with Silverlight

· One of the best online resources is the library of videos from the latest MIX event in Las Vegas. These are many dozens of hours of videos that talk about Silverlight and User Experience - http://sessions.visitmix.com/

· The Silverlight Reference includes the nitty gritty of Silverlight. Covering both versions of Silverlight you will find detailed information on all functions, events, properties and objects as well as useful examples - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404708.aspx

· Microsoft Learning has also created some fun Silverlight Snacks that provide you with high level information on Silverlight

· Mike and Mike’s Silverlight Webcast series is great (mainly aimed at developers but also useful for you as a designer) - http://www.miketaulty.com/SLVideos.html

· Tim Sneath is one of the most popular bloggers in Microsoft. He is a developer but his posts will be very useful for you too: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/

· Lynda.com has produced a free Silverlight series. Please note this is Silverlight 1 but might still be useful for you in order to understand some basic concepts of Silverlight - http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=473

· Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 Feature Matrix. Learn more about the differences between Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 - http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/overview.aspx

Expression

· Visit the Microsoft Expression site for more information about the Expression tools, video tours, feature lists, trials, preview versions and to purchase the products.

· Visit the Expression Community site for more learning and technical resources for designers. Visit the forums, download the samples and check out the blogs from some Expression product team members.

· The XAML-Ready agency session at MIX will help you speed up in understanding Silverlight and Expression concepts from a Flash designer point of view - http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=C01

· To learn more about DeepZoom check out this post which talks about the latest version of DeepZoom Composer.

Microsoft UX and Design    

· Microsoft Design site. Learn more about different designers who work for Microsoft in different areas.

Community

· Kirupa is a Program Manager in the Blend team. You will enjoy his blog and will found lots of great tricks in there: http://blog.kirupa.com/?cat=13

· Arturo is a Product Manager for Expression. You can also get news and announcements in his blog: http://ux.artu.tv

· All the Expression product teams also own and post news and tips & tricks in their blogs:

o Expression Blend and Expression Design

o Expression Web

o Expression Encoder

o Expression Media

New Resources

This online resource list for Designers will continue to be updated and expanded. You can visit http://ux.artu.tv/?page_id=70 to get the latest version.

Sorry for the delay in posting, I promise I’ll be back soon.  As you can see, I’ve got my hands a little full at the moment

In the mean time, check out this interview I did with Tony Sokolowski, Design Director at Vertigo.

Check out the rest of the Expression Newsletter here.

Check out it out here.

UPDATE:

Check out the Microsoft Press Pass on Cynergy’s win!

Deep Zoom used to be called “Seadragon”  - gotta love code-names.  If you running IE, you can check out an earlier implementation of the technology in a project called Photosynth.  Incidentally, this was was also featured at TED07.

Our launch example is a great project we did for Hard Rock.  As some of you may know, Hard Rock owns a massive amount of music related memorabilia.  Working with one of our partners, Vertigo , we created Hard Rock Memorabilia.

Now, you too can create your own with this handy new tool: The Deep Zoom Composer

I’ll post my own Deep Zoom Gallery once I’m back from Redmond tomorrow.  Enjoy!