When Written: Oct 2008
If, you are like me, and use Visual Studio a lot then you might be interested in Sara Ford’s Weblog ‘Tip of the Day’ at http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/default.aspx. Sara gave a very interesting presentation at Remix 08 on these tips and I came away with a lot of very useful tricks and time savers and now have her RSS feed logged into my reader.
Bill Buxton
Also at ReMix08 UK the key note presentations were by Scott Guthrie who is Corporate Vice President in the Microsoft Developer Division at Microsoft US , and Bill Buxton, a noted industrial designer who has been employed as a Senior Researcher at Microsoft since December 2005. I hadn’t heard Bill Buxton speak before and as a jaded journo I was not expecting what turned out to be a truly inspirational talk on the very important place designers should have in the software industry. The concept that ‘everyone is a designer’ was to him like saying ‘everyone is a mathematician’ because we can count our loose change. Bill Buxton is considered an authority on industrial design. He is now working with Microsoft and told me that he has never worked with a company that had made his job so easy. It seems Microsoft are getting very serious about the role of the designer in the next generation of applications.
Bill signing his book on design for me.
Take a look at his keynote speech at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/remix08/agenda.aspx and next time you are involved in a project perhaps you may heed his words: “Don’t try putting lipstick on the proverbial pig ……Don’t copy, Innovate!” I felt his views were truly a breath of fresh air and if what he says is going to happen then we are in for some interesting times from Microsoft.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton