Click here: http://www.riagenic.com

I’ve enjoyed my life at Microsoft Australia and Headquarters and look forward to heading back home to Australia, joining Readify.net as their first UX Specialist and embracing the UX Community.

My new blog is vanilla at the moment, as i’ll be updating my GUI over the Christmas break.

Why did I resign?

No real particular reason, in the end it was over something trivial and minor, nothing to get all gossipy over as the real core of the reason was that moving to a foreign country with my family was simply a lot of tax to pay in terms of comfort zone. The sacrifice was made willingly but in the end, working for one of the biggest software companies in the world wasn’t a good enough reason to stay, and it was a situation where you had to really invest into living in the United States and that for me mainly was just a weird and surreal experience.

What did you actually do?

You know, I get this question a lot sometimes I come up with a variety of answers. If I look back on my year inside Microsoft head quarters, I’ve not really pegged down what my job was, as i kind of did a lot of things, small things that probably most will never really be able to measure the impact on. I think what i did the most however was connect the community to the various staff within Microsoft (as well as some planning and marketing stuff), but that’s what I'm the most proudest of.

I made sure folks were hooked into the right people to pitch their ideas, wish lists, bugs and even criticism.

I’ve also been quite raw and honest with folks around how Microsoft is as a company, as all to often i see a lot of perfection based expectations placed on Microsoft and I simply have to reset these expectations a little, as in the end, we’re just a company that makes software – just like you. The difference between the software company down the road and ours is that we had a couple of really smart guys figure out that the world needed desktops on every machine. They made billions from it in the end, and a lot of other folks in this company have also been wealthy & successful as a result.

Where to Next?

I’ll blog about that some more once some details are worked out (next blog post in a few days), suffice to say, I’ll be still in the thick of the Silverlight community and I plan on really hunkering down and doing some projects that I’ve been itching to produce for a product I've devoted over 3 years into. I think Silverlight is one of Microsoft’s first example of us as a company trying something new and innovative and it is innovative, despite what Adobe staffers may moan about – I’ve been using their products since their birth, so when i see their childish crap at MAX 2010, i just roll my eyes and simply say “grow up, its been done, move on”.

What i will say is this, I’ll be back home in Brisbane Australia where I plan on building a huge house (my biggest house ever, 800m2) and getting back to Moto-x riding (damn I miss my dirt bike). I’m also going to be doing a lot of UX Evangelism (No I'm not working for Microsoft Australia) for RIA overall (RIAGENIC.COM is my new host of goodness).

What do you plan on doing with Silverlight?

I think right now, the world is in a spot of trouble with RIA. It’s probably the one time overall where we really need to stop the brand politics and focus on getting the concept of RIA out there in the wild more. It doesn't really matter if you’re using a plug-in or even HTML5, it really comes back to the principles of User Experience. I think there is way to many hacks out there preaching the concept of UX and not really sitting down and fully digesting it that or too many folks are pushing their brand first and UX second. It should be the other way around, you figure out what your UX story should be and then figure out which technology fits your team or companies future.

The technology part will dovetail into place once you figure that out.

Overall though i think there is a confidence issue with Silverlight, I get asked all to often “where do i start to learn Silverlight” and i typically point them to Silverlight.net and wish them good luck. Well, next year I plan on rolling up my sleeves more and focusing in on the on-ramping of Silverlight, help folks “get it” more, mainly educate them on why it exists, where it is going and how they can start. I’m doing it also with other technologies as well, and I plan on being more open and to the point around this topic.

I’ve seen a lot in the last 3 years, more than I care to know and I can honestly say this – Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Sun etc are all the same and share similar behavior patterns. At times you see the bad but you at times ignore the good, or you see only the bad and the good is hidden – that or the bad is hidden and all you see is the good.

The inside stories i could tell would put me in legal hot water, but suffice to say, I’ve lead an interesting life in the last 3 years and Microsoft definitely is not the one folks should point fingers at as much as folks would argue.

Our guys do good work, they often don’t get as much credit for it as I'd like and the ones that often do some really stupid things, at times hurt a lot of good in Microsoft. It’s the price you really pay for having around 80,000+ employees. Sometimes folks screw-up and we all pay the tax for it as a collective punishment.

RIAGENIC.COM is where my new home will be.

I’m frantically trying to move what i call “the greatest hits” from this blog and put them onto my new blog over at riagenic.com - (Don’t worry you don’t need to update your RSS feeds as this one is portable). I urge you to subscribe to my RSS feed if you haven’t already done so.

I’m humbled by the traffic I get with this blog, and I’m in the top 100 bloggers at Microsoft and i think i got this much success in blogging for speaking raw honest truth, despite at times the internal heat i used to get from it. That’s ok, as in the end it’s about walking up to people i know in the industry and be able to tell them with a straight face what the good and bad is. Nothing is ever perfect, and Silverlight, Flash, AIR, FLEX, WPF etc all have big flaws as well as big plusses.

People who have inspired you?

Scott Guthrie. That guy is the most down to earth Executive in Microsoft, I mean I sometimes forgot he’s not “one of the guys” and is basically a well grounded personality inside Microsoft. I personally think he can definitely be the next Bill Gates for our company.

User Experience Evangelists. These guys have one of the toughest jobs in Microsoft, going into the agency space etc and evangelizing our brands is a tough gig. We’ve never really been in that space and over the past 3 years they have done an amazing job – I'm very proud to have worked with them all.

Designers in Microsoft. “Design Inspiration”, “UxEcosystem” and “UI Discussion” are three of my favorite internal distribution lists. The design teams throughout Microsoft are doing amazing work, its a hard area for them to succeed in given we are an engineering culture within. They are able to do things though that put a much needed face on innovation, and I look forward to seeing and experiencing their future success.

Silverlight Engineering Team. Anyone who has the guts to go “File->New->Silverlight” when all odds are stacked against you is definitely one thing they should all be proud of. It’s a brilliant product and the amount of effort they have put into making it is driven by a lot of passion. I’ve sat in on meetings where I've come out smiling and thinking “those guys get it” more times than I care to count. They’ll do good, be patient and understand that in 22 months or so, they have built a product that will shape the future of Microsoft User Experience in general. In 22 months we have a product that is on more than 400million+ machines world wide. Adobe can play the ubiquity card all they like, but we’re gaining fast and so that playbook will change and look out Adobe, as these guys are extremely gifted and determined to raise the bar in RIA overall. They don’t care about what Flash is doing, they care about what we all do with RIA.

Michael Bach (Snr Prod Manager Web), David Pugmire (Prod Mgr Silverlight) and Anees Ansari (Prod Mgr ASP.NET).

I’ve counted on these three for the past year or so for a lot of guidance and i have a lot of respect for what they have achieved. Michael is one of the driving forces behind UX in the Microsoft.com/WEB ecosystem, and you’ll hopefully see more of his design skills in the future. David “DaPug” Pugmire, is the guy who’s fighting in every developers corner in the Silverlight space, his first and only thought daily is “why is this a good thing for the Silverlight dev community” and he will fight any who ignore them or give them the slightest amount of disrespect. Anees is the ASP.NET man, he’s a workhorse and is the first to arrive and last to leave guy inside our floor, he works day and night to make sure ASP.NET gets as much attention as he can muster and spend budget on. He has a healthy engineering background and he gets it as well.

Brian Goldfarb/Brad Becker. Brian & Brad are two super smart guys, Brad is a deep thinker and Brian is a fast mover,combined I've seen Silverlight come out unscathed and well positioned. I’ve had many debates with these two managers of mine, but in the end they’ve always made a lot of attempts to cover my back when I’ve probably pushed the envelope a little too much more than I should. I can see Brian/Brad right now probably thinking 20 ways I could improve this blog post, its ok, its what they do :)

Tim Heuer. The guy is a workhorse for the SL community, enough said. He’s got the weight of it all on his shoulders and he does a truck load of work on behalf of the brand, so he’s got a bright (heh no pun intended) future in the Silverlight space.

Adobe. I think majority of the Evangelists should be fired, as they really bring the brand down. That being said, guys like Lee Brimelow, James Ward etc are the guys who understand Evangelism. It’s not about proving the other guy is a joke, it’s about showing those who are interested in your space a path forward. I think Adobe this year have done an amazing job at what they have produced and I look forward to seeing more of their work, but I think the whole Microsoft vs. Adobe thing has gotten old and played out, so my last parting wisdom as a full time Microsoft employee – Learn Humility. I did, and it works.

Silverlight Community. As cliché as that sounds I’ve been blown away by how fast and motivated this community has become. I’ve watched it grow from a single weird thread inside a website to this explosion of growth, one that I've been proud to be apart of from the start. I look forward to sitting in the crowd with you all, watching things unfold as you do and echoing praise/criticism as the next person. I have the contacts still but in the end i look forward to learning from you and giving you any advice i can give where i can.

Last words before you leave?

I technically finish up at Microsoft on November 1 2009 and then I take some holidays to pack up my house etc and move back to Australia. The last thing I want all to know and its something that Chris Bernard (one of the best mates I have in Microsoft) once told me in early 2007.

"..The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man..." - George Bernard Shaw

It’s a quote I lived by in Microsoft. I ruffled feathers and made friends, I long past cared what people thought of me and i feel that 50% of Microsoft wanted me fired while 50% wanted me promoted, it was the 25% that lied I always had trouble figuring out. Its good to have a mixed reception as it provokes change.

Please Subscribe to my RSS feed. It will always move with me:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MsMossyblog

How many kettles have you owned over the years? is it more than one? has it always been the same one?

It’s a pretty straight forward device, you fill it up with water, it heats up and then you tip the contents out into a container.

Why then are there so many varieties of Kettles? Why are there constantly new ranges or approaches to the Kettle that come out each year?

The answer lies in the fact that end users are like Kettle owners, each has a unique preference and taste towards something we often take for granted each day.

Each time a kettle is designed, it’s done so typically with an idea of who the end user is and how it could blend in with the rest of the owners kitchen style.

Software is no different to the kettle in many ways, its job is to blend in with the end users desktop, compliment their confidence level and ensure it upholds the core functionality required in order to carry out the task.

I all too often see folks go off the deep end with the User Experience in their RIA solution, and I often ask if they’ve stopped boiling water and are doing everything but that simple task.

Keep it simple; keep it fashionable and always think about User-Centric Design first, engineering second. You’ll find life gets easier that way.

Brought to you by
RIAGENIC.COM – Where Design + Technology Intersect.

I've noticed a few occasions where developers have wanted to know what Version of Silverlight is installed on the end users computer when they arrive at a site. There are a number of ways you can approach that question that will yield a response, namely in non-IE browsers tapping into the navigator.plugins["Silverlight Plug-In"].description will provide such an answer. In MSIE you realistically need to keep testing the Silverlight.isInstalled(buildnumber) until you get a FALSE (which infers the last known TRUE will yield you your known versions of installed Silverlight).

Now typically with all future builds we classify the number as being "0major.0.4monthday" (e.g. 03.0.41009) the build was released. Now this is helpful, as you can essentially run some for-loops over the month/days to yield the "Silverlight.isInstalled()" but that does often create a lot of redundancy in terms of logic.

Instead, what I'm thinking of providing is a JSON API on microsoft.com/silverlight which will provide a complete and up to date Array of Silverlight RELEASED buildnumbers that we actively support.

Is this something that folks would like or have a need for? Please reply with answers to the below questions

Questions:

1. Why do you need this JSON Array to exist? can you expand on how you intend to use it?

2. What else would you like to be added to this array ? (i.e. known browser/platform supported versions?)

3. How have you found the overall "Get Silverlight" experience in terms of getting users to begin the installation (i.e. not the install wizard itself, but everything prior to this)

4. What else would like from the Silverlight Team to help you solicit end users to Install Silverlight. Is there a blind spot we have and what would you like us to do (give it a priority weighting as well please).

Please Respond to these questions here:

http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/127881/286548.aspx#286548

Or

Via the Comments below.

One insight Michael came up with the other night is that Apple own white. It got me thinking and the more we looked at how other sites are designed, the more we both agreed that in the end its very hard today to come up with a site design that uses a big picture and is done in white without someone saying “dude, that’s so apple”.

I’ve done some design mockups for microsoft.com/silverlight that i want to pitch to the team, but am very annoyed as the more i look at them the more i can see them being labeled “that’s so apple”.

Another insight is that we noticed these days a lot of the brightest and best website designs seem to evolve around a central image, in that photography is playing a vital role in the way sites are designed.

A big vibrant picture can actually hide a lot of “meh” in a design.

Example:

http://sethsaid.com/

With a big vibrant image, i found my initial reaction to this site to be well designed.

Now without.

It just seems flat? and very monochrome. You can find more at (Web Creme Web design inspiration) and have a look at BIG Image vs SMALL Image.

Now lets take a throw-away design I was tinkering with for Microsoft.com/Silverlight.

The design is ok, but the image for me lacks life in that without the image, the design would look very basic.

Now lets see what happens if I add some other elements that i got from another site (as it struck me as a great concept to mood-board together from).

The two look completely different imho, and it sort of brings new energy levels to the design – even though its a very very basic design in the first place.

Damn you Apple, damn you and your white space designs.

Scott Out.

[ Click here to view the post ]

At first I just simply groaned, and waited for the beating, as I know internally I've moaned about our approach, so i was expecting to see us slaughtered in a pro-Apple fashion. The Author however, did approach the post from an unbiased perspective in my opinion, and i don’t see anything outrageous about the post (other than the stupidity in the comments in parts).

I happen to agree with the majority of the points and have arrived in many ways at similar conclusions to the author.

For me, I recently (early this month) took ownership of our Microsoft.com/Silverlight site (specifically the User Experience) and it’s a site I've agonized over for weeks on how to fix. The current version of the site is not one we as a team are content or happy with. We can do better, and we will, but its posts like this that help me navigate the best approach with regards to user experience and information architecture.

Silverlight is one of these products that we are keen to simplify more in terms of understanding of what it is, why its important you invest in and lastly what the possibilities are in using it.

Keep it Simple, Don’t make me think – are the mantra for my next version of the site and it was blog posts like the one mentioned that simply help.

I love this kind of open raw feedback, we need to see more of it.

Send me your vision of how we should build Microsoft.com 2.0, i.e. what is it we can do better, what we aren’t doing, lets paint a vision of the future? If you feel in the mood to redesign the sites and want to pitch your design to that team, PLEASE DO SO.. I will walk your pitch to the team(s) myself personally.

The below is my own personal experience / observation of the industry in general. It doesn’t stop at Silverlight either as prior to Microsoft I watched folks do the same with Macromedia Flash and then Macromedia Flex.

Not to mention AJAX and so on, even HTML! – yes, I watched the birth of HTML unfold into what is now a commercial entity known as oxygen ;).

The Adoption Curve.

Contact. You’ve found the word Silverlight fly past your senses, you’ve not pinned down what it is but its the talk of the town

Awareness. You just finished reading something about it and have a somewhat bit of knowledge in and around what it’s capable of doing.

Understanding. You just finished a tutorial, training session or brown bag, overall you’ve got what we commonly call a “basic” understanding of the product.

Evaluation. You’re now writing a quick prototype of a project you’ve thought about making in Silverlight. You’re still unsure, but the product has captured your interest levels.

Trial Usage. You’ve built a first draft of your Silverlight solution, and you’re essentially shopping it around for feedback and help you up sell / include this into your peer’s technology radar.

Adoption.You’ve built your Silverlight solution and are ready to deploy, you’ve troubleshooted your way through learning the product and are now what we would call an “Adoptee”.

Institutionalization Your solution is in play, you’re now thinking about the next release or next project, you’re well on your way to success and have either a positive or negative feeling towards the brand.

The Learning Curve.

I’ve often thought about the whole competitive story around what it takes to adopt a technology. I know I've personally learnt more technologies than i thought my long-term memory could contain, but none the less they are there, crammed deep within the dark matter of which i call my brain (Java, PHP, C#, ActionScript, Flex, XAML, XSD, Maya, VRML etc).

The reason I do think about the competitive nature of technology is that in many ways when you read a Flash vs. Silverlight style post (insert Apple vs. Microsoft etc) it at times reads as if that technologists are easily conned into adopting a technology they’ve never used before.

In that the x number of years they’ve spent nurturing their chosen technology could easily be diverted to the new shiny toy that they have before them.

I put it to you that, folks aren’t that easily swayed, that often its simply a case of a number of factors. They are:

Boredom.You’ve been using X technology for the past N years. You’re essentially peeked in terms of all that you want – not can – learn from the said technology. It’s time you explored your horizons and shop around for what’s the latest & greatest, that or research an old technology simply because of the nostalgic geeky cool flavor it brings to your technology palette.

Goldrush.You’ve seen how much others are making off the Y-Technology and you’re keen to get some of that action. You are motivated my greed, but that's ok, as in the end getting a leg up in life is fair game. You typically would of probably ignored this technology in the past, but all the other kids are doing it, so you’re essentially force fitting yourself to the adoption.

Duress.You didn’t want to adopt, but you’re forced to due to a project you’re working on or about to. You start off in a negative state, in a duress state. You’re constantly trying to marry your existing skills over to this new technology but are finding it a rough road to follow. Eventually you figure it out and have an overall negative / positive emotion around the technology. It’s at this point you decide to either continue to pursue the adoption or abandon and retreat back to your preferred X-Technology of choice.

Curiosity.You’re neither bored or motivated by gold / project. You’re simply one of those people who love to explore no matter what the technology. To you, technology is about the art of creation and problem solving and you tinker with them like someone explores a music library – all music is good, it just depends on the listener.

Summary.

There are different motivational reasons as to why someone adopts. There is no one fits all approach, and given in today's IT environment there are so many moving parts to keep track of, it’s not an easy thing anymore.

In the old days, I remember learning Delphi vs Visual Basic. I choose Delphi simply because I couldn’t grok the VB way of code, to me the Delphi seemed more natural. Delphi didn’t get the uptake as much as VB did, so what happened?

Companies like Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sun etc all have an offering to provide you all. The main mission overall is to highlight the technologies strength, divert from the weakness and encourage you to at least get as far as the Understanding stage in the life cycle. From there its entirely up to you, as that's where the freedom of choice really kicks in (there is only so much a company can market).

It’s from here that you decide based on merit and personal experience (aka Time vs. Commitment) and ultimately this is the true test for these companies. As for us in Silverlight this is where if were to take a pulse at your confidence level, you’d tell us data that I'd rate as pure signal. As this ultimately for us is the tipping point of success vs. failure for the product as its our job to make sure you understand what the product is, ensure it’s easy to learn and lastly reassure you that you’re not alone – as nobody likes to actually bleed when it comes to bleeding edge adoption.

Is that all?

Next Post, how the human mind absorbs the adoption lifecycle, lets dig into cognitive science. The new fad i like to call “Cognitive Load Theory”, as once you fully understand how the human mind works and ways to seed information in both short-term and long-term memory, it gets really interesting… well for me anyway.

The desktop inside windows in my mind is like your desk in your office. It’s your surface area where you keep things that you can recall at a later date - “I’m going to put that TPS report in the upper right of my desktop surface, so i know where it is later”.

Problem today in software land is everyone keeps asking you to keep their TPS Reports on your desk and either you’re too lazy to agree/disagree or you didn’t notice they just did it. Pretty soon your desk is cluttered with lots of paper and it’s hard to find your chosen items vs.. everyone else's.

Don’t abuse the desktop.

At present I’ve not seen an installation experience that tackles this problem other then a weak check box that is default checked (like somehow its important that you clutter my desktop) and that’s essentially your way out of this installation spam.

It doesn’t work really, as firstly you’ve got to be conscious of the fact that the checkbox is asking you “Would you like me to add to the clutter” and secondly making things “default checked” is an assertion really, much like “Push Polling” – it casts a prejudice up front and rarely have i seen actual self selection work.

Instead we should approach it differently. Instead of approaching it as a default checked item, allow the users to opt in manually and educate them on the power of the desktop itself and why it exists – as often I'd argue folks assume its simply part of the vortex of “things i don’t understand about my computer”.

e.g.:

Would you like to save this application shortcut to your desktop? Yes/No

The desktop is where you keep important information on your computer that helps you remember where things are – treat it like your desk in your home/work office.

Something like that anyway.

I’d argue the desktop today has fast become the wasteland of “icons that i’ve long forgotten” or “those icons that get in the way of viewing my desktop background”.

It’s not that you’re an idiot or aren’t good at programming, it’s just that you are trying to juggle learning Silverlight and building it at the same time. You’re already stressed, at making some bets around adopting the product or maybe you’re trying to still decide if this is still a good bet. Don’t add more layers of stress by trying to find a way to keep your entire code base re-usable.

Yes, your background in ASP.NET or WinForms is going to help you a lot going forward and i bet you have a bunch of best practices or albeit ones that you’re comfortable or at peace with (screw that guy who tells you you’re doing it wrong, did you ship? yes, well back off is what I'd say).

Silverlight is going to be different though, it’s going to require you to rethink a lot of things you’ve learnt in the past. Now you can blame the product for making you change your behavior, sure that can be an easy way out i guess, but you’re smarter than that and you adopted this for the right reasons. You’re rising to the challenge, and i’m telling you now, the code you right in the first phase of your adoption isn’t going to be poetic.

Stop wasting your time trying to build a framework that is scalable, you’ll do that in a few months. Instead, get used to the feeling of producing a solution one that you can throw away – yes i said it, throw away – in a few months from now.

Just ship. As time passes you’ll get experience, just like you did with the technology you’ve just spent x number of years spanking to death. Only this time, you’re going to be in the next early majority and you know what, it’s going to be more fun – i guarantee you.

I’ve spent close to 15 years programming for the web, i miss it. I enjoy it and I've used nearly all languages associated with the web (you name it, I've written an app for it) and for me as a Product Manager for Silverlight, I often grow jealous of the work you do.

Do me a favor though, practice more. As when I leave Product Management for Silverlight and I one day jump into the hot seat with you, I expect – no – demand you teach me what the best practices are.

The guys on my firewall can’t help you just yet, as we’re busy building the actual product itself, but soon once it stabilizes our teams over at Patterns & Practices and Framework crew, are going to show you the Microsoft way, but that doesn’t mean its the right way, it’s just our preferred way.

We hope by that stage you’ll contribute back and we’ll move forward in Rich Internet/Interactive Applications (RIA).

Throw away your code, trust me, you’ll be better next time.

I only ask is that I've got this theory or ill feeling that we at Microsoft are making far too many websites than we need to, but at this point it’s just a theory (i have no evidence or data to substantiate this theory either)

I’ve created some artist mockups of where I’d love to one day position Microsoft and the way in which we interact with the community  and potential customers. It’s an ongoing project, one that I’m doing to provoke some new thinking inside the company, but first I at times need to pitch what I think the initial problem is. Have a look and tell me if you agree or disagree?

Slide 1 – What do all these sites have in common?

Slide 2 – They can be quite frustrating to discover and use?

Slide 3 – They require unnecessary persistence.

Slide 4 – They echo the same data at times ..at a rate that makes your head spin.

Slide 5 – They require you to think in multiple personalities.

Slide 6 – They all try and be different, but the end user is usually the same.

That’s the theory anyway. What do you think?