Albert Shum describes how Microsoft is moving moving mobile design forward with Metro Design Language.

The user experience around Windows Phone 7 stands to move mobile design forward based on traditional principles of modern design from transportation graphics.

“I think we’re at the forefront of something new, something more immersive,” said Albert Shum, Windows Phone Design Studio GM on their attitude towards designing Windows Phone 7.

Shum described Windows Phone 7 as an opportunity to move design forward from the old by standards of just polished icons, “It was really about the future. That’s the opportunity we have today.”

His team collaborated across Microsoft to bring all the best elements together from Xbox, Zune, Office, Internet Explorer and even Windows Messenger.

“It speaks to how design needs to work these days,” said Shum on his team being collaborative and open.

Metro Design Language is based on signs from the metro rapid transit system.

The new UI design, called Metro, was a fresh approach from Windows Mobile platform and was aimed at a consumer market.

Metro design language was used for the for the user interface in Windows Phone 7 as it was grounded in good graphic design, strong use of typography, and bold graphics from the metro rapid transit system.

As well, the designs of the metro rapid transit system from King County, Washington, which Metro is based on, were timeless and placed a large emphasis on typography.

Shum said timelessness is something you want in your UX design.

Windows Phone 7 is aimed at connecting back to the consumer market. “There was a fresh energy and fresh approach to ‘how do we reconnect the consumers?’ But not just reconnect but also move it forward.”

Shum’s design team also, took time to review the past and where they wanted to go with the user interface and incorporate design inspiration to ground themselves.

“The job at UX is no more than what we all aspire to do. Let’s make it look great but also work well. You also want to make it delightful.”

The team worked on a UX design that would applicable across other Microsoft experiences.

The the design will also be used across Microsoft, “That’s what you want from a good UX design, that is a system that is applicable across other experiences.”

The design team also worked on making sure teams understood the design principles and goals upfront so that discussions could be formed around them. “You don’t want to argue about is it 12pt or is 13pt font. You want to argue about principles.”

Metro Design Language Principles:

• Clean, Light, Open, Fast
• Celebrate Typography
• Alive in Motion
• Content, Not Chrome
• Authentically Digital

Shelley Evenson discusses service design using examples of social media such as Twitter.

Shelley Evenson participates in a questiona and answer period after her presentation on service design.

“The social is really the inevitable extension of all services that we’re all going to be participating in … businesses have to address the value exchange with constituents wherever they are,” said Shelley Evenson, Principal in user-experience design at Microsoft Start-Up Labs, at a discussion hosted by the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Comparing examples of shopping online now to ordering from a Sears catalog when she was young, Evenson described how design as a service is becoming more important for companies.

When she was young she was only able to afford a single item at a time from the Sears catalog and then had to wait six weeks for delivery. Now she could order shoes online at night and have them arrive at her doorstep the next morning.

“People’s expectations are changing,” said Evenson about rising expectations from users online.

During her trip to the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary she encountered several services such as Metro, Starbucks, Air Canada, etc., which helped to create a good service experience on her trip.

“The five P’s that are involved in service are people, product, place, process and performance” said Evenson. “Service designing is really addressing functionality and form.”

Evenson also brought up examples of how quick social media is today with information (i.e. Hudson airplane crash on Twitter) and it’s power to influence opinion. “Movies have been made and broken in a day. So if reviews are negative in the tweet stream the movie won’t last, it’s over in a day.”

“People are participating in more things in more ways and there’s a lot of information.”

Her past work with companies such as Apple, CIBC, Kodak, and Xerox focused on design languages, strategies, design prototyping, organizational interfaces, and service design.

Todd Zaki Warfel’s wireframing process.

Will Evans’s wireframing process

As an interaction designer I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of wireframes and the amount of thought that goes into them. They are not the final product but a means or a process to get there. Websites like I ♥ wireframes or Wireframes Magazine provide plenty of great examples of what can be done.

There isn’t one best practice for producing wireframes. It seems the process can range from drawing sketches on paper to complex vector drawings using tools such as OmniGraffle.

A critical aspect of the wireframe is being able to explain the functionality of the website. It’s not meant to be a layout guide for designers but a means to focus on what’s best for the user coming to your website. It’s not so important to try and lock down every single aspect of the usability or function, but to reach about 80% of what needs to be there. The process of going through design iterations at the end can finalize the rest.

There could be better processes to reach the end, but so far this is what I’ve experienced.

A great book for people starting in the field of UX is “A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler.

The book gives a broad view of what user experience designers do in their field and the roles they have on projects and teams.

It also provides valuable information on the disciplines required of a UX designer such as wireframing, prototyping, and creating task flows.

It does not provide massive amounts of details on each topic, but gives you enough information to know how it all fits in the broad field of UX Design.

“Our target for this book was beginner to intermediate and folks who are in small teams who… may not know where to start,” said Unger.

“I was just mad because it seem like we had gotten really far away from giving people practical things to move themselves ahead in their careers,” said Unger on why he wrote the book.

“We have to do a better job of furthering the field so the people who have been around for a while can figure what’s next to help shape us better.”

“We need to get a lot of people to the point where they are being more strategic and less tactical,” he said on the challenges facing the UX industry.

Unger has been involved with information architecture for large websites such as Oprah.com and United Airlines. He is also a regular contributor to Boxes and Arrows, a site focused on graphic and interaction design and information architecture.

Co-author, Chandler, is the experience design director for an interactive agency, Manifest Digital. She has experience leading UX teams and teaches workshops at DePaul University and various conferences.

Pankaj Kedia, director of Intel’s Global Ecosystems Program for Mobile Internet Devices and Smart Phones, responded to an email question:  “Consumers want to do multiple things at the same time: listen to music while browsing the Web, look for directions while looking at your calendar and talking with your friends, and so on,” -CNET, News

As the tablet race heats up with the announcement of Apple’s iPad, an important feature that could be a difference for users is multitasking. But can users really multitask?

An example of multitasking using technology is using mobile phones while driving. There’s a lot of controversy around this because the use of a mobile phone while driving increases the risk of an accident.

And some laws have been enacted to ban the user of cell phones while driving because drivers exhibit increased impairment over intoxicated drivers.

So even if new tablet devices offer the ability to multitask over Apple’s iPad, can users even handle doing more than one task at a time effectively?

If not, then multitasking is not much of an advantage to have on a tablet device.

Evenson will be speaking at the John Dutton Theatre at the Calgary Public Library on February 11, 2010.

Her work covered a wide range which included design languages and strategies,  design prototyping, organizational interfaces, and service design. Her clients have included Apple, BMO, CIBC, Kodak, and Xerox.

Nielsen is a leading web usability consultant who worked at Sun Microsystems (1994 to 1998) to make enterprise software easier to use.

He is also known as the founder for “discount usability engineering” for quick and inexpensive improvements in user interfaces.

Nielsen’s ideas on usability are not without critics, but working in the field of UX you will most certainly run into them.

Jakob Nielsen’s website has a distinct plain look to it with only text and search bar at the top. Nielsen gives reason as to why there is only text and almost no graphics on Use It.com.