RSSPDC 2008: Look out for the 'delighters' in Windows 7
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 30, 2008, 3:19 AM
Color, a Microsoft design team discovered with the aid of a focus group, is quintessential to a positive user experience. In advising developers to add delight to their apps, a team leader made a revelation about Windows 7's mission.
LOS ANGELES - During a mid-day session on best practices for designing applications to take advantage of Windows 7, Microsoft's principal design manager Samuel Moreau told attendees that his team was charged with the task of building new visual elements into the new user interface specifically to make users feel better about the operating system.
The term chosen for the goal his team would strive to achieve is "delight." And to that end, the design team came up with, in effect, a concept for devices whose entire purpose is to invoke some sense of fun and happiness.
"That may seem like a really strange thing; I realize now, I'm the design guy on stage at PDC, and I'm talking to a bunch of developers about delight," said Moreau at one point. "What delight looks like...is pleasure, enjoyment, and love. How do you actually get somebody to enjoy the experience of using their PC? It's a really odd thing."
Moreau then proceeded to demonstrate what he introduced as an API for delight, including a slide showing sample code...which he then conceded to have been entirely in jest. Then instead, he showed an example video of a participant in a Microsoft focus group who spent several unprompted minutes playing with hovering the mouse pointer over the icons in a prototype of the Windows 7 taskbar, just to notice that each icon was lighting up with a different color.
"For the new taskbar, we actually set out -- and maybe we're crazy, but we set out -- to actually design in what we call delighters," said Moreau. "Now, our characterization of what a delighter is, is literally something that puts a smile on someone's face. But how do you achieve that? We had all kinds of ways the team got together, we had brainstorms, and different ideas."
One of those ideas culminated in a system where the underlying application gets to choose the color of its own halo, rather than a traditional Control Panel setting.
As Moreau explained, "We knew that, as a UI function, we needed to show some user feedback when the mouse enters the region that is a launched application icon -- that's a UI thing we had to achieve. Now, what we could've done is made it the Windows System color. That's great. But we had this sort of thing in the back of our mind -- we wanted to put smiles on people's faces. So through the course of a number of different brainstorms and explorations, the idea popped up, 'What if we let the application shine through? What if we let the application color shine through to the experience, and let it be about the application? Let's not be about Windows here.'
"So every time you hover over a launched application, you're going to get a color that's unique to that application. Now, what's going to happen is, the more you use your Windows 7 taskbar, the more applications you launch, the more windows you have running, the more color variants you're going to have along the bottom, the more beautiful your experience is going to be."
Moreau did not take questions after his session, so we didn't get a chance to ask whether his team would be task with applying similar beautification to User Account Control.
i'm a power user who needs and demands function, but i must definetly be in the minority here because i happen to love a customized and beautiful looking desktop. i change practically everything about once every two weeks, based on what new vstyles i see on deviantart. give me both form and function, but please don't ignore one for the other. some of you guys are so funny how you would rather sit in front of a freaking command prompt instead of a ui. sure, microsoft needs to make sure windows 7 does not make many of the mistakes that vista made, but i fully support them making improvements in all areas. i'm on my computer for many hours a day, why the hell would i want to spend those hours using a boring blah of a desktop, when i can do the same stuff and enjoy the look. to each his own i guess.
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|Here here man.. I completely agree.. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with "eye candy" especially in win7's case because there IS new functionally behind its "eye candy". It really DOES make things easier for "joe the plumber, suzie the housewife, etc."
Heres hoping for a world without a quote unquote Windows 7 Basher.
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|Kinda whack. First thing I do when working on a windows machine is turn everything black.
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|@ mjm01010101
Why do you use Windows ?
Maybe the good old DOS is a better solution for you.
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|All I can say is that 95% of the stuff said down below my post is complete FUD... these people don't read enough about windows 7 to know about all the work going on behind the scenes, too... this one little article about 1 little topic is the basis of their whole opinion on what windows 7 will be like... wow...
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|Alright Icey. I wasn't going to do this, but I feel it behooves someone to explain these comments to you. It is not about reading one little bit of an article and judging an entire operating system on it my friend, it is about Microsoft's failed policy (see Vista) of more and more shiny sparklies instead of functionality and reliability that has people posting here. "Delighters" are just one more pedantic example of pulling the pixelated wool over the users eyes. Vista was 6 billion dollars worth of proof that form should follow function, not "let's make it pretty, and patch it later."
Don't you remeber XP before service pack 1? By default, Windows Messenger was started up and hackers and phishers worldwide rejoyced in being able to tell us that we needed larger--- well, ahem, you get the point. Yes, it was an easy fix, but your average home user has no idea how to fix these issues, and really doesn't want their 11 or 12 year old child seeing that sort of thing "pop up" on the screen while he or she is looking at the Power Rangers web site.
All I'm really getting at is that Microsoft needs to take these things into consideration in structuring Windows 7.
btw. If you want to be taken seriously about your posts, you have to explain your point of view. Just saying, "you guys are dumb" really isn't a very compelling argument.
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|There's just too much to type in 1 little comment to explain all the changes in windows 7 that demonstrates the work MS is putting into the functionality of windows 7. If people read all those other articles, then this article about one little feature of windows 7 is an extra little nice touch, and not an example of MS not learning from its "mistakes". But the way a lot of people seem to be taking this post is to say that MS hasn't learned, and are trying to cover it up with more asthetics. They're saying... hey MS... stop trying to make windows look nice... and just make it work!... why can't they do both? they clearly are doing both! they're making it look nice (cause that's all average users see). A normal person that doesn't read sites like this is gonna look at it, and it's going to look dull compared to vista and think MS took a step back in progress. They need to make advancements on both the UI/UX and the core. And they are doing BOTH! That's why people need to read more on windows 7 than just this post, and they'll see where MS is working on performance and reliability, and SIMPLIFYING actions. You want examples of things that they're doing in the background?
- Cleaning up min-win and further componentalization...
- parallelizing driver loading during boot to take advantage of multi-core systems
- VHD mounting and boot support built in
- shrinking windows disk image
- libraries
- removing the duplicates of windows live software (mail, photo gallery, movie maker, etc.)
- more customization ability
- simplifying common tasks
they're doing a lot... you just gotta find the places to read about this stuff before ranting like MS isn't doing anything but adding sparkle...
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|Thank you for the post, and a well structured post it was too. No sarcasm intended. It was well written, and to the point.
As you say, Microsoft is learning, but needs to be reminded at every opportunity what is wanted and needed by end users. I work with these people every day and have yet to meet anybody who has said: "Wow, Vista really runs slow, and doesn't recognize my older software, and doesn't operate my old printer, but I want to keep it 'cause it's so pretty!"
I therefore have to conclude that it is important to keep reminding Microsoft that they need to put functionality first, and pretty second.
Thanks again for a good post.
If you included some links to articles you may have found interesting or educational about Windows 7, people could read them for themselves. Good stuff!
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|http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_preview.asp
http://www.istartedsomething.com/
http://channel9.msdn.com/
http://www.microsoft.com.../events/pdc/videos.mspx (watch the Day 2 videos)
http://arstechnica.com/j...-windows-7-and-netbooks
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/
For a start
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|Just FYI, the concept of "delighting" the customer is far from being a new or Microsoft-developed concept. It was researched, developed, and coined approx. 10 years ago by the Customer Satisfaction research group (which included me and my colleagues) at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management.
It was my esteemed colleague, Prof. Roland Rust, who theorized and championed the concept of "delighting" customers instead of merely satisfying them.
This article tells me is that Microsoft is a full decade behind current knowledge about providing its customers a positive product or service experience. 'Tis no wonder Vista is a dismal failure in many of its customers' eyes--including mine.
In addition, it reveals Microsoft continues to steal many of its very best ideas from the pioneering efforts of others' hard work. All credit for stated "brainstorms and explorations" goes to Dr. Rust, Ph.D., Marketing and not to Samuel Moreau or Microsoft.
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|If you would have been any more than a janitor in that place you'd realize how dumb those statements are.
Universities do ground breaking research for the greater benefit of all. Why shouldn't the output be picked up and used in practice?
Further - None of this stuff is actually developed in Marketing but based on Psychology research marketers are plagiarizing (at least in your mind set).
If you clown had anything to do with it then instead of b****ing you'd be proud about the success and uptake.
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|"It was researched, developed, and coined approx. 10 years ago by the Customer Satisfaction research group (which included me and my colleagues) at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management."
What the blue blazes are you on about?
Are you suggesting Fabergé delighted recipients of his eggs purely by coincidence?
Perhaps you are suggesting also that the Ferrari 250 GT Spider California SWB delighted people through sheer luck?
What kind of a study is that? That's a state-the-****ing-obvious study. That's what.
Yes, Microsoft should have already done this, but your study certainly wasn't the first to know about this.
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|We were the first to use the term "delight" in reference to a point beyond mere "satisfaction."
And were it so obvious, there would not have been an entire book about it published--and now finally read by someone at Microsoft.
Edit: To be clearer, when using a Likert scale (e.g., a 7-point scale) to measure degrees of customer satisfaction, "delighted" was never before a point on the scale. Previously, the scale's highest measure of satisfaction was typically "extremely satisfied." Research revealed there is a point in consumers' minds beyond "extremely satisfied," that it was in fact quite different from "extremely satisfied," and the term "delighted" was used to define and measure that point.
(And no, I do not expect you to understand this. But at least you have been informed.)
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|Marketing is 90% psychology. In fact, for my doctorate I took approx. 50% statistics classes, 40% psychology classes, and only 10% true "marketing" classes.
Marketing is extremely multi-disciplinary. It is comprised of psychology, statistics, social psychology, economics, consumer behavior (90% psychology itself), sociology and a couple other disciplines. That is why it is one of the more difficult terminal degrees to get.
And should you doubt my word about from where the concept originally came (i.e., not psychology but marketing instead), first do your research and then pen your response. You'll look far less clueless than that janitor to which you refer.
And, I am proud of it. Thus my response to make certain proper credit is given for work Microsoft seems to wish it should now take full credit.
(And btw Microsoft, you still owe me a copy of Office promised me by one of your sales reps in exchange for help I gave her at that time.)
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|Is this a joke?? I SERIOUSLY hope no tax payer money has been spent on this "study"...you guys figured that "delighting" customers is something companies should do? That's great...you guys should have called me 10 years ago and asked me if delighting people was a good idea or not, I would have saved you a lot of trouble I think.
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|Yes yes , WIn7 is ment for multitouch pocket PC but for desktop PC it starts to look very bulky
If programs are forced do open with animation delay then eventually you will start hating the OS!?!?
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|win 7 meant for multitouch pocket PC? what are you talking about? that's what windows MOBILE 7 is meant for...
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|I really enjoy eye candy in an operating system. Whether it is OSX or Windows Vista, I think it makes using the computer a little more enjoyable. I know a lot of people talk about functionality and other features and tidbits including speed and efficiency. However my needs are pretty simple...I just need it to run my programs and put less strain on my eyes.
I think Windows 7 is moving in that direction for me. Some people are gonna hate it, some people are gonna love it.
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|This seems like a very silly discovery, but it shows that MS may (in some capacity) actually be trying to think about entertaining the common user instead of themselves this time around. The reality is that eye candy sells. Unlike the BetaNews users, most people don't know or care what is going on under the hood. They are just after a pleasant user experience.
Providing an array of colors on the taskbar really isn't a giant leap. The taskbar UI design has a clear focus on touchscreen angle that MS is banking on. Thus the buttons along the bar that bring up big previews. It does indeed make for a nice touch experience, but will result in decreased mouse efficiency as you will have to move the cursor up and then horizontally across the large previews.
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|(note: comment must be read in sarcastic tone to make sense)
which is so much of a decrease in efficiency compared to clicking on 1 IE button to pull up a list of 17 IE buttons (yes i do often open that many IE windows without closing them).. and having to mouse over each one separately to see a thumbnail or the full title... versus seeing all the thumbnails at once by clicking on ONE button... and then you don't have to mouse over each individually just over to the one you want to go to... and even if i wanted to mouse over all of them... it takes so much more effort to move the mouse to a BIG target like a thumbnail to peek at the full size window... compared to moving up the menu the size of 1 menu item at a time... less of a target.. gotta be more precise with my mouse movement... to see 1 thumbnail at a time...
(end sarcasm)
maybe it's just me but i see this as an improvement on efficiency...
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|I like it so far...........
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|Looks cool :)
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|Microsoft! Now hear this!
1: Shiny does not equal better
2: more is actually less
It all started with XP's "LUNA interface". more searching and clicking to get fewer results. But we got over that childish bit, and XP grew into a mature, well behaved OS that everybody could comfortably use. Kudos to the MS XP team!
Then Vista! can you say, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" Being an IT by profession, and being in the business since 1979 I have to say that removing Vista, and installing XP on computers has become my bread and butter, right behind spyware removal. Personally I see the installation of XP onto a newer PC as an upgrade. To functionality! So, microsoft, lets try the "less is more" approach. We don't need a 3D GUI that requires a massive graphics card to operate. I neither need nor do I want URGE or any other storefront built into my software. That's just telemarketing at it's worst. As for cardspace, give us a break. Do you really think that anyone with an IQ over his or her shoe size is going to entrust YOU with personal data? Stop with all the messengers and share to web crapola and give us back the days of reliable, private, safe, and usable computing. We had that from Windows 3.1 all the way through XP, ( with the exception of Media player 11 and .net 3.0 ) and give us fewer OS versions. What is it now? 6 versions of Vista? Have you gone completely round the bend?
Putting more into an OS, or even your Office Suite just makes it that much harder for the average person to use. I could do everything with Office 2000, or even Office 97 that I have to do in Office 200?-what, 7 is it now? For that matter, I have been using Open Office for a while, and I must say, for a free app to do anything an overbloated monster of an office suite that costs me hundreds of dollars will do is really astounding. Lets hear a big round of applause for the Opensource community.
Remember the old addage, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid.) Try to keep in mind that you will never be able to push an OS that is written by geeks, for geeks, and it takes a geek to understand. Talk to the average Joe that wants to e-mail, and check the news online. The last thing he or she wants is a bunch of flashy stuff popping up to annoy them. What you think of as cool, is probably just an irritant to your greatest demographic, the home user.
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|you don't read enough... go find out more about windows 7 before u start spewing this crap...
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|AMEN! Bring back simplicity and stability locally to the user instead of using web services as replacements.
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|Funny, but I don't recall mentioning Windows 7 in my comment at all. My comment was simply a suggestion as to where I think MS should be taking Windows 7. Any other inference is in the part of the reader.
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|that's why you should read more about windows 7... so you don't have to spew this crap cause they've already heard it a billion times and are addressing it... would have saved you some time ranting...
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|1: Shiny does not equal better
2: more is actually less
ABSOLUTELY TRUE
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|(MS's brainstorming secret headquarters)
So ahhh... errr...
WinFS?
-boring!...
MinWin?
-boring!...
Eye candy!
-yeeeezzz!! i want hearts, baloons and cakes!!
Nah, not meaning to troll really, just spicing things up! What would be of this forums if not! :) :D
Win 7 is coming along nicely as a better Vista but seriously, there are no ideas behind this OS.
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|everyone brings up winfs, although i question how many people would find it useful.
give this a read, it makes some good points.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=516
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|Welcome to one of the first Windows 7 bashing threads.. This is a sad day...
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|It's just amazing how uninspiring some ppl are. But keep it that way, it's so simple to skim the top. A good example: "NO i don't want to smile when I talk about a close relative death or write a tough report, thank YOU."
Sigh... No, they don't intend everybody to ROFL whenever using a PC but create a pleasant and comfortable environment.
Modern psychology had way too little impact on the device many of us operate for most of their work day (that's a PC for the slow folks...). To recognize what people across cultures consider delightful in a UI is a very interesting and challenging project and I can only commend them for taking the challenge (well, let's see how it turns out in practice)...
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|In my view, the derision is due mainly to a poor choice in naming. What this amounts to is PC Interface Design for the ADHD Generation.
If it doesn't blink, bounce, jiggle, wiggle, expand, fade, explode, or some other verb, the modern public gets bored. Quickly.
There are a lot of people out there who simply cannot concentrate on any one topic for more th...
..Oh look! A chicken!
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|The name is fine with me, I guess it's a tough call to pick one. On a real workstation I usually tune fluff down to a pure functional minimum (primarily out of resource concerns) but in general I am looking forward to it - esp if it makes things aesthetically consistent.
You live on a farm?
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|lol.......... I agree
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|Nah, I was using Internet explorer and got a pop-up. ;)
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|"How do you actually get somebody to enjoy the experience of using their PC? It's a really odd thing." (Samuel Moreau, from the article above)
ROFL! Well, apparently Apple CAN do it, so I guess it IS possible and there isn't THAT much odd about it. Poor Microsoft: all that money and they still can't hire bright people...
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|Well, I totally agree with previous commenters here: MS's problem is that they have been redesigning windows for years now. What they need to do is build a new os from a scratch. So NOT redesign the old windows nt, but a build a completely new thing, new gui, etc. And unless they understand this, what well have is ALWAYS the same old windows.
And of course, those redesigns is the very reason Vista is so crappy, buggy and heavy: it has all the previous windows versions inside ;|
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|Your a Idiot, Diamond. You make it seem like they can build a OS over night. Thats like me waking up in the morning and saying you know what I'm going to build a new OS today. If it was that simple I should you would of done it, you moron. Your just another person who has crappy hardware that Vista isn't capable of running on. So instead of blamming yourself for not making enough money and buying new hardware, you blame the OS. If you had any knowledge about anything you would realize how good Vista really is.
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|You idiot (plain and simple)
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|Its not only that, creating an operating system is not that simple and takes many years. Its easy for you to say it, but think of every single windows developer and how they would feel to have to completely re code all there programs to work with a new OS.
www.talkprice.net
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|Diam0nd, I agree with the part about rebuilding the Windows Platform from the ground up. It could obviously work since Apple moved from OS9 to OSX but it didn't happen over night. There would be some compatability issues with older programs that could be ironed out over time until developers come out with updated versions of their software to work on the new OS.
It's not a dumb idea to rebuild a new foundation but if they haven't already been working on a project like that then it's going to be years until we see something new. Sooner or later they'll run out ideas on how to polish a turd (just an expression, guys, calm down) and they'll be pushed to rebuild.
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|"Jealous ones Envy" ...Windows 7 is coming along fine. Vistas codebase yes its gotten out of hand with certain things but rewritting and starting over nah its not needed the NT kernel is fine. I think Microsoft is going in the right direction this time around and building off real consumer/customer feedback. Vista yea was a enormous OS feature and aesthetics wise, but now that they know the actual codebase for Vista is stable and solid why not build off of it and make it better, refine it and make it what it should be; a great OS, dont like it use something else but dont talk out ur a-hole cause saying something along the lines of ditching the NT codebase and starting from scratch makes you sound like you just got off the small yellow school bus. R&D/Developer colaboration and Team colaboration in a company with over 90,000 employees and growing to just drop a codebase and start from scratch is something shareholders and most of the ppl at MS would have a hissy fit with. You may want to look up Singularity and what Microsoft Research is doing with the code from that project you maybe amazed at what reading can do for ya. >:P
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|Yup I agree with you man. I have a suggestion for you, just ignore these idiots. Trolls like him always come here and go. They want a modern OS to be blazing fast and their old hardware...LOL
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|you have no idea what that implies. Backwards compatibility is a top priority for windows. Vista did what you implied in many ways and look how much bad press it got for which, on the most part, was due 3rd parties.
Windows does not serve a niche market like mac, its a BUSINESS OS and therefore cannot change things on a whim, too many company's apps would break and MS would get crucified.
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|Well MAc can do it , just Microsoft is too small for new developements
When public beta rolls out then Microsoft will answer everyone that wait for win8 or switch back do Vista SP2 :D
Eye candy with bulky looks isn't good idea for desktop PC
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|Free advice M$, "The media is the message."
There is a reason the Mac/OS X experience is so much more "enjoyable" than Windows. Apple realized the essence of this decades ago. M$ is only beginning to "get it" now. But they have a painfully long way to go.
They need to stop trying to build beauty on top of beast. Develop a new elegant and modern OS in parallel with "Windoze" and faze that grotesque, over-burdened hunk-of-junk out for reliefs sake!
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|Beauty likes to be "on top". [smiles]
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|Oh that nasty :P
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|Every one knows that when WIn7 rolls out then Microsoft will answer everyone that roll back do Vista sp2 or wait for Win8 or Midori
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|apparently you haven't been actually reading about windows 7... This one article is about a tiny little thing to enhance the user experience.. read the interview with sinofsky about running windows 7 on a netbook (1 GHz, 1 GB RAM)... windows 7 is going to be the best version of windows EVER...
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|No it is official : they don't know what to do with their OS. M$ is in superficial mode to its highest.
I can count the dozen of stupid assumption and user interface issues this would bring, the endless annoyance of bad developer tastes, the inconsistent color scheme, the laudable psychology behind this story, the need of focus group to discover the contrary of the obvious (after all they did "discover" that the vista UI was beautiful and well designed right ? ), the social manipulation undertone that this implies, and NO i don't want to smile when I talk about a close relative death or write a tough report, thank YOU.
The most amazing is that they have lost so much their sense of reality that the stupidity and ridicule of it does not strike them at all and they do a conference about it.
Congrats to the guy that got this job though, good place to hide and get some money, even if you do have to make a fool of yourself on stage once in your career it may be worth it .. depends on the pay :)
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|You must remember, to the willfully deluded nothing is wrong...... Everything is "delightful".
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|"and NO i don't want to smile when I talk about a close relative death or write a tough report, thank YOU."
And you do that how many times compared to the having fun times?
You're suggesting it's nicer to operate a grey box with absolutely no soul in it whatsoever?
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|So, you think that eye candy is the most important "feature"? That's pretty shallow and very consumerist.
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|Where did he say that?
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|Certainly not, and I didn't even imply it.
However, I think that considering how much we use computers it would certainly be nice to have it makes you smile (or at least not be unhappy). Features are all well and good, but you need a nice UI to tie it all together.
A UI on its own is useless.
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|THE CAKE IS A LIE!!!!!
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|Things does not have souls.
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|