MS and UX .. love to hate?

One of the classic principles in User Experience is that in no condition you should confuse the user. I am sure every practising User Experience Designer would tell you that in the very first meeting. As a designer one has to ensure that you do not end up giving instructions that are contradictory in nature.

Check out this popup message that I got on a Microsoft site, when I was trying to signup for the Microsoft 360 tool.

Go, confuse your user!

Now most users, would not even read the text, and straightaway click on the “Hide this window” button. Yes, I did check it with a few other people around me too. They said they clicked or would click the button without reading the text. After all a button has a higher affordance, and is more likely to be clicked, when it appears on a pop-up (as that’s the thing you are supposed to do)

So an example, like this, you are just reducing the user experience but providing such options. My point, is why would you do that?

I kept clicking on the “Hide this window” and the window refused to hide!

Sometimes, I really think who does the UX at MS. I know a few friends who work there, and I should check with them. Even if the excuse is that it is a survey by a third party, I still believe that there should be a UX quality check, in an organization that is impacting atleast a billion people worldwide!

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The d.Fund

The way I see it, I think this is a blessing for us designers to work on more startup ideas. It gives a lot of confidence that quite a few successful startups like Youtube, Flickr were founded by designers.

I am hopeful that there would be more of such activities in the near future, and also in India in particular.

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Education on my mind

I am often fascinated by TED talks, and this one is another one of those. Have a special interest in education, so I keep looking out for videos related to it. This is one that I had seen quite some time back, but re-saw it again today.

About the video (from Youtube) : Clifford Stoll could talk about the atmosphere of Jupiter. Or hunting KGB hackers. Or Klein bottles, computers in classrooms, the future. But he’s not going to. Which is fine, because it would be criminal to confine a man with interests as multifarious as Stoll’s to give a talk on any one topic. Instead, he simply captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides — and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he’s a scientist: “Once I do something, I want to do something else.”

Just love the energy with which the entire talk it delivered.

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On Design Decisions

Interesting Video that I came across this morning.

Excerpts from the talk- “The best designs come from not one, but hundreds of well-made decisions. The worst designs arise out of hundreds of poorly-made decisions. All that stands between you and a great design is the quality of your decisions. Where do they come from?”

 

Jared Spool – Anatomy of a Design Decision from User Interface Engineering on Vimeo.

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