Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Al — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:13:43 -0000

"Microsoft is run by geeks. "

..And they're also supported by them, too :D

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Walter — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:10:36 -0000

I would just like to point out for the record that there is only one designer at Jackson Fish. I'm very much a developer, and Hillel is...hard to briefly describe. :)

Also, Bess: we are mowing the grass real soon now!

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Grayson — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:55:44 -0000

Sounds like ye olde basic corporate America if you ask me, and of course no one did.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Julien Goodwin — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:03:13 -0000

I think one thing is wrong in your entry, IME most *good* developers won't say no to a good UI designer.

They probably won't bother/don't know how to do it right to begin with, but if the designer can show how the changed UI helps the user they'll be happy to implement it if they can.

If the designer can't show how the changes help the user then why should the developer bother? (Before anyone mentions a consistant company look/feel that [should] help the user)

However, there are always situations where for one reason or another a UI improvement can't be used for some platform, time or cost constraint.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Vivian — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:35:43 -0000

Designers and developers are equally important, i guess thats why Microsoft have decided to embark on that profession and created Silver Light and Expression: http://www.designervsdevelo...

Though I don't think Adobe will be too happy about that.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Jason — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:34:37 -0000

"It also isn’t lost on me that Bungie, the folks who make the video game Halo, has its own building 10 miles away from headquarters (in the opposite direction from the Xbox team) and doesn’t even have a Microsoft sign on the front of the building. When you walk into Bungie it’s clear that the artists run the place, not the developers."

It is classical innovation and new ventures thinking to separate the culture of a new venture from the "going down the cost curve" mainstream thinking of the parent.

A creative culture is needed for the new projects. Xbox has been a happy accident for Microsoft and they still don't realise this to the full extent. One of the key reasons it is successful is that it is a separate, physical and different culture from the main MS crew.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Bess — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:43:38 -0000

It's nice to see public recognize the importance and significance of designers.

It's nice to see this blog covering design.

http://www.theyrebeautiful.com needs to adjust the homepage layout for certain browser with installed toolbars. You can't click the button if the Grass Footer id="footer" is covering those 2 buttons where the id="page_buttons" is.

I am trying to encourage Wikis to put more efforts on the Beauty side of the equation. We'll see more on our "Beauty & the Beast of Wiki - Usability vs Functionality".

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

SuzyQ — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:50:33 -0000

"It is really easy to see why companies like Apple, Nintendo, etc. just plain get it, and it is hard to see why companies like Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola just don’t get it. It is so simple yet so hard to understand."

Before cannonizing Apple and Nintendo, let's not forget their huge design mistakes:
Apple: Flower-Power and Tie-Dye iMacs.
Apple: Lamp Shade iMacs.
Nintendo: Lunchbox GameCube
Apple: QuickTime player, period (both Mac and Windows versions).
Apple: iTunes UI

All companies have hits and misses.

Scoble, you ignored Gary Russo's comments regarding Microsoft's streaming of Live Earth (why, because it goes against your theory that Microsoft can do no right)?
http://news.com.com/8301-10...

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

veltis — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:57:43 -0000

I've had beers with enough Nokia designers and other employees over the years to have gotten the impression that what Scoble is describing is a lot like what happens at Nokia too, except the abuses being committed by managers, not by actual engineers. The decisions are made by managers who have no real investment in the product, and just don't want to rock the boat; they sit around in meeting rooms all day talking crap about things they know nothing about, and come up with nonsensical decisions. Then far, far too much of it is subcontracted out, so most of it is just enforced by contract, rather than having designers/coders be able to stand up and say hold on, this makes no sense, and it's going to be complete crap.

I've been a Nokia user(never an employee, and probably never after this post.. :) ) ever since their first "car phones". Their initial UI was fantastic--simple, fast, and got the job done. I've stuck with them since because they have still managed to keep the UI better then the atrocious UIs of their competitors. Even so, "better than horrible" does not equate "good".

Now that the iPhone is out, Nokia has an example of the kind of phone I know many of their designers have been pushing for for years--apps that are integrated, simple, and coherent. Unfortunately I suspect that what the managers will take away from the iPhone will be no more than "we need to add transparency and more animations!" and more of Nokia's actually fantastic human resources will head off to jobs elsewhere.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

MParekh — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:33:18 -0000

Thanks Robert, for 52 above. Will check the video out.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

fred flintstone — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:04:39 -0000

Robert, hotornot.com doesn't sell virtual flowers, they sell an invite to meet someone wrapped in virtual flowers. there's a big difference between that and this stupid flowers thing.

it's bad design the other way: prettiness is all that matters, functionality is irrelevant. put on your calendar to post about jacksonfish a year from now, i bet at least one of them has gone back to the mothership by then.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

kiddie — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:45:32 -0000

M$ is not run by geeks, sadly it is run by suits.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Chris — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:43:32 -0000

"is" should be "as" in the first paragraph. Sorry

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Chris — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:42:38 -0000

"The virtual goods business model is in it’s infancy…kind of like the days of prodigy and compuserve."

Hello?

Virtual goods have been SELLING on the internet for 15 years now. Software, games, music, ebooks, stock photos being sold online is virtual goods has been going on for years.

I think you explicitly mean virtual clipart gifts, specifically from men to women. That in itself is not new as dating sites have been doing that for years as well.

While it is true that Koreans have been conditioned to want and pay for this, it is less true in our market. At the very least you need a large pool of hot women in order to make that work. Not politically correct, but true.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Tom Servo — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:52:12 -0000

And for that matter, if I were in charge of the UI team and had to defend myself in front of a goddamn committee, the answer to every question of theirs would be either "APPLE!" or throwing hardware of them in their general direction. At some point, even they have to get it.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Tom Servo — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:48:44 -0000

The Office UI team got out some rather nice looking stuff, way better than what you've got with Vista. Now that a lot of people of said team are now in charge of the Vienna UI, and probably things past that, maybe we finally get something decent.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Robert Scoble — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 01:08:09 -0000

Michael: it has to be Julie Larsen Green, now on the Windows team. She works for Steven Sinofsky, who runs the Windows team now. I interviewed her here: http://channel9.msdn.com/sh...

She was the one behind Office's new ribbon interface.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

MParekh — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:15:55 -0000

sorry, was addressing Chris, comment no. 46 above. My bad.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

MParekh — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:15:08 -0000

Chris (comment 48), you may have noticed that Facebook sells virtual "gifts" starting at one dollar. Don't know how much they sell, but wouldn't be surprised if that's a pretty significant and growing number over a user base of 25 plus million, half of whom log in every day.

The virtual goods business model is in it's infancy...kind of like the days of prodigy and compuserve.

One of your best posts, Robert. Curious, who would you say is the highest ranking "emotional architect" at Microsoft?

If you're hesitant to name names, how many "EAs" you think have reached the upper echelons are your alma mater?

thanks.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Guest — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:24:37 -0000

As crazy as it sounds, the Microsoft product that has impressed me the most lately is Windows Live Writer. It's pretty basic but it's pretty and it works well. It's well designed.

I still can't stand Vista though. I'm very happy running XP with the Zune theme.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Chris — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:09:15 -0000

"Chris: do you realize that hotornot.com sells virtual flowers for $10 a piece and is doing a landmark business in doing so? Or that there’s companies over in Korea that are making tens of millions of dollars from virtual goods?"

People are so retarded. I did not realize how much until now.
Anybody that pays 10 dollars to briefly look at bad clip art of flowers that they were spam mailed is beyond salvation.

No Scoble, if it were that easy, we wouldn't be building hot new tech. Do you realize how much revenue a site like friendster or myspace could make if they simply charged ONE DOLLAR???
So why don't they?

Do you think the owners of those websites would simply turn down the money?
Different audience, and from what I can tell They're Beautiful doesn't seem to be advertised in Korean.
They also do not have a bank of women showing themselves off in pictures to salivating men, ready to do anything to get their attention.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:04:50 -0000

@15 skc hits at the core of why this is so hard. Who is an all-knowing design guru? Designers aren't infallable. Some of the designs they propose are better than others. Some degrade usability. Many clients are clueless about how to judge designs other than to say "I like it," "I don't like it," or "too much dev time to execute."

Listening to designers doesn't necessarily mean doing whatever they propose. Jobs is not just passionate about design, he spends a good chunk of his time every week reviewing design. He looks at U-I design, industrial design, and marketing design. The market appeal of Apple products depend on all three. Design isn't decoration that gets sprinkled onto a product. It's in the DNA. Of the designs that are presented to Steve Jobs, for example, how many does he bless and how many does he reject? Anybody know the ratio? (I suspect that's one of Apple's closely-guarded trade secrets.)

Thanks, Robert for opening this topic. Sadly, design remains a mysterious and suspect discipline for many folks who are responsible for making decisions about tech projects. We're all the poorer for that.

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

steve clayton — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:44:50 -0000

I agree Robert, it's sad. Too many smart people leave because innovation is stifled. it makes me very sad to see talent leave and i know a few outside Redmond who have done the same.

one thing that does frustrate me is that people think the only talent exists in Redmond. There is plenty across the world of Microosft and their voices need to be heard and their stories told. it's not all about cool products but also about how people use existing products in cool ways. Like the Silverlight stuff with Skinkers this week. UK company working with MSR UK doing very cool stuff.

We're a platform company after all and though http://www.microsoft.com/de... is cool, it needs an update

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

Karen Darmer — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:06:10 -0000

"My iPhone is magical to use because it does the drag-the-finger animations."

Robert, I'm confused. I thought your iPhone was a birthday gift to Maryam :-) Have you purchased another one?

Re: Microsoft’s top designers leave to give away lovely flowers

redfish — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:43:17 -0000

Also, I think enthusiasts and bloggers are missing what has made Apple design good when its been good.

All of the attempts of Apple to be 'emotional experiences' gave way to more smooth minimal design in time. Fruity iMacs, gone. Pinstripe, gone.

The mac interface and mac hardware is becoming more and more minimal, with the 'emotional' aspects of it disappearing over time, because people realize its bad taste.

I really think that Microsoft does need to improve a lot of things in their design, but if they go for all the gimmicky things that Apple started with and then dropped, they'll be learning the wrong thing about Apple's story.