Bill Buxton 'Mix'-es It Up

Mix kicked off today in Las Vegas. My eWEEK colleague Darryl Taft is there. I watched the Silverlight feed of the opening keynote.

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I'll start with the customary product news: Microsoft previewed new Expression 3 applications, ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Also announced: Commerce Server 2009 is shipping. And Microsoft released a Silverlight 3 beta, which brings Silverlight to Mac or Windows desktops, no browser required. Silverlight 3 will ship later in 2009. NBC announced Silverlight 3 streaming of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. NBC will stream in 720p and provide in-place advertising.

But the excitement—and plenty of it—was in how the first Mix keynote began. With a bang. Bill Buxton, principal researcher for Microsoft research, stormed the Mix stage. What a start! He was the right answer to the geekfest in Austin and the iPhone love-in in Cupertino. The 60-year-old showed that excellence knows no age, and that Baby Boomers can teach something to tech-savvy Gen Xers and Net Gen-ers.

Bill roamed the stage like a caged cat. He has a stereotypical mad scientist look, and he rambles like one, too. Think Uncle Monty from "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events."

I love this guy. He rambled on and on about the importance of design, in seemingly stream-of-consciousness fashion. There wasn't even a beginning to his presentation. He just started talking about design and experience in a shockingly conversational way. Perhaps it's because Bill is Canadian. I grew up about 10 miles from the New Brunswick border. People there talk like Bill. Someone calls on the phone and starts talking, without identification, soon as you lift the receiver. It's personal and direct conversation.

I'm a sucker for great design, and recognize the absolute importance of good industrial design. Bill clearly understands good user interface design like few other people. For starters, design isn't for itself but for the people using it. There are lots of reasons why designs can be bad. One is the award-winning approach, where design is about wooing the attention of design peers rather than serving the needs of users. Design isn't for meant itself.

Luck Isn't Chance
Bill used the example of Trek Bicycle mountain bikes, where the design's importance is the biker's grin and the joy that comes from riding through a stream. I thought about sporting watch company Suunto, which has the motto, "Replacing luck." Bill spoke about luck, quoting a Roman philosopher: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

Bill repeatedly emphasized the importance of preparation in good design, and he came at it in a way many developers might not naturally consider. He spoke of the importance of process and the need for doing at least five concepts before finishing the design. Bill repeatedly emphasized the importance of sketching designs, through a process. He described multiples as the "essence of design."

But was Bill being a Baby Boomer or does he understand something essential about the tactile nature of design? He asserted that the Post-it note is the best medium for sketching out ideas. What, no advanced technology? Right; he told developers to sketch ideas on Post-it notes and to initially scrap software development tools. "If you're a trained programmer, the last thing you should do is start programming," he said.

What a concept, and it makes sense. Programming should be the last process. Do you build a house by first pounding nails into boards or cementing bricks together? No. The process starts with a blueprint, a design. From that design, you then build a house. Bill encouraged developers to step back from what they trained for, programming, and make design the first and most important starting place.

That's easier said than done, which is why Bill repeatedly emphasized sketching designs. He asked Mix attendees to envision sketching out either of his two smartphones, or their own. Most people could do that. But if asked to sketch the UI, most people would have problems. UX (user experience) design is tougher to recall, even though it is so important to the user.

Design Tells a Story
Bill spoke about the importance of storytelling and how it relates to good design. "Stories are the best form of viral marketing," he asserted. "There is a plot development to the things we do." He described the story two ways: in terms of the design sketched by the designer or developer and the story one told by the user's experience. He referred to himself and Mix developer attendees as "experience designers."

Experience design evokes emotion, whether it's the customer's initial reaction to a design or the story he or she lives while using the product, such as the Trek mountain bike.

Earlier in the speech, Bill reviewed a series of successful designers from the late 1920s who excelled despite the Great Depression. More importantly, modern industrial design was born in the United States between 1927 and 1929, right before the economic cataclysm. His point: Innovation can flourish during an economic downturn.

For example, designer Henry Dreyfuss opened his office for theatrical design in 1929. He went on to design the model 302 and 500 rotary desk telephones for Bell. Raymond Loewy, who started his career designing store window displays, got his big break in 1929, designing a Gestetner duplicating machine. Raymond went on to do auto design work for Studebaker, including the sporty Avanti. Walter Dorwin Teague did magazine design before being commissioned by Kodak, in 1927, to design cameras.

Designers don't just tell a story, they listen to one. Kodak wanted to increase its cameras' appeal to women. Walter presented the Vest Pocket line in five distinct colors. Nearly 80 years later, Apple's Jonathan Ive applied the same five-color concept to the iPod Mini. Jonathan didn't steal from Walter's work, Bill said. Jonathan learned from it. He listened to the story that successful design concept told and he reapplied it. The consumer electronics device of the 1920s taught a lesson about good design for a 2000s consumer electronics product.

Canadian Design Excellence
Bill joined Microsoft about three years ago, after running his own Toronto-based design firm. He might be better known as chief scientist for Alias/Wavefront from 1994 to 2002. The mantra from Bill's Website:

Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the "things" that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.

By the way, Canada has a long history of good industrial design. Among my top-five favorite RSS feeds is The Canadian Design Resource. I look forward to new posts every day.

Something is different at Microsoft Research the last couple years, and it has to be Bill Buxton. The division is on a roll releasing some well-designed and technologically innovative products. Better UX projects are coming elsewhere, too, with Windows 7 being one example.

By the way, Bill spoke so fast, I couldn't type quickly enough to capture all his great quotes. Hopefully, Microsoft will post a transcript later today. As for the rest of the keynote, it was a real letdown. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's chief developer, couldn't match the energy or vision of Bill's presentation.

Judging from Twitter chatter, today's tool announcements excited many developers. Microsoft offered them plenty of goodies. But I must say that the tools are not the beginning but the ending. The process starts with the design story and sketching concepts that Bill emphasized. Since I figured most bloggers and journalists would write about the tool announcements, I focused on Bill and his important vision that every developer should understand.

[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at gmail.com.]