UX Strategy Musings from Will Tschumy, Microsoft User Experience Advisor

We’re very excited to announce that MIX08 has sold out.  Last year was my first MIX – it was a huge and successful conference.  This year is even bigger, with a dedicated UX track.  All told, very exciting! Don’t worry, registration for MIX09 should open soon

Microsoft’s UXE meta-blog, Design-For-Innovation.com has undergone some updates.  Among other things, it finally has an aggregated RSS feed for all of the posts.  Be sure to check it out!

So I’m a little late in posting this, but we’re really excited to have so many great design firms working on this problem (AKQA, Cynergy, Clarity Consulting, Thirteen23, and CreateThe). The grand finale is at SxSW in Austin, TX on March 10th. Check out designchallenge.phizzpop.com for more details! Congratulations! Your firm has been selected as [...]

I found this on Channel 10. Just to be really clear: This is a joke: Life At Microsoft – The Truth Revealed

I’m really getting excited about MIX this year.  Based off the work that Chris, myself and the other UXEs have done, we’ve been able to secure a dedicated UX track for MIX08. You’ll see Lou Carbone (Experience Engineering and author of “Clued In”), David Armano (Critical Mass, and author of Logic + Emotion), Dan Roam [...]

We handed out this problem to our participants this morning: Phizzpop Design Challenge LA: Overview “PhizzPop Design Challenge” is an invite-only, nation-wide competition focused on solving an interaction design problem. Contestants will attend 2 days of Expression, Silverlight, WLP, as well as be supported by technical staff from Redmond. At the end of the training, [...]

Hi all.  Yes, I’ve been very bad posting recently, in part because I’ve been planning another design challenge similar to Express Yourself.  The new design challenge is being run nation-wide through our Phizzpop program.  If you haven’t already done so, and you live in Austin, Boston, Chicago, or Los Angeles, be sure to run to [...]

As one might guess, Microsoft’s development process never really stops.  Similarly, now that we’ve shipped Windows Vista, work now begins on the next version of Windows. There was a great article on APCMag’s site on what’s known about the new effort.  There are  three things that make me excited:  The project is being led by SVP [...]

After much deliberation, the judges decided that AKQA won the competition with their “Mosaic” solution. The judges felt that Mosaic came closest to being a complete solution.  While the judges felt that none of the teams completely solved the design problem, the felt that AKQA’s solution balanced the constraints best.  Congratulations to AKQA!

 Vertigo’s solution was entirely different from any of the other contestants.  Rather than focusing on the exchange of media between friends, Vertigo focused on the ongoing conversation between friends. “It’s like Tivo for the conversation” said Susan – the developer from the team.  Bluejay allows a group of friends send messages to a common, location [...]