Information for designers and interactive developers - Issue 1 - February 2008 home  |  articles  |  register for the newsletter  |  Issue 2  |  Issue 3  |  Issue 4  |  Issue 5  |  Issue 6 Microsoft Envision in Milan/Italy Christel De Maeyer is project leader at plugMedia, a collaboration between HOWEST-departement PIH and UNIZO with support of IWT-Vlaanderen. plugMedia's role is to inform and assist multimedia web companies with their innovation. Christel attended the Microsoft Envision conference in Milan and shares her experience in this write-up. Joining the Envision event was an interesting experience. Microsoft invited several European companies to have a brainstorm and discussion about the future of design and user interfaces. Coming from an Adobe world I appreciated this event a lot. Also to see how Microsoft approaches this market. I especially liked the philosophic side on the several discussions, as we cannot separate emotions from design. The different companies showed their best works on interfaces they made for different +500 companies. Also some new approaches on e-commerce sites. It is of course a luxury to have clients who invest in being different on line. It is not an easy market, and the bottom line is it always needs return on investment (ROI). The two day brainstorm on a different location, away from your own workspace gives the ability to take some distances and think a bit further than just the commercial standard sites approach. Even though I've been long in the field, it is good to listen and discuss to/with different people and companies to evaluate yourself or your company. The keynote with August de los Reyes, made this event more than worthwhile, an interesting vision on design and how people interact with objects. To meet former Macromedia employees within Microsoft was a real treat as well! A couple examples on what we discussed you can find here! Interfaces Visual search (partners like Amazon, eBay...) How do you feel? Multi-Touch walls, a more natural way to interact Other websites Some books we discussed and some of them are really good! Homo Ludens, De Groeimotor Dan Pink, A whole new mind Donald Norman, Emotional Design Sherry Turkle, The Second Self; Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet Marvin Minsky, Society of mind; The emotion machine Way to go! Miel's column - InkSeine, a joy for every tablet Miel Van Opstal is an Enthusiast Evangelist working for Microsoft Corp and is a real trendwatcher. He's most outspoken through his well known blog and in his column he discusses something that wow-ed him over the past weeks. This month he writes about InkSeine, a new release from Microsoft Research. Read more Interface Design - An interview with Manuel Clement As desktop software and web applications become more and more powerful, the importance of design as a means of keeping new features and functionalities accessible is increasing rapidly. The Microsoft XDR team lead by Manuel Clement is dedicated to researching new possibilities in this field. Find out about Manuel's vision of the future of user experience and interface design in this interview. Read more Expression Design: A whole new toolbox for graphic designers, by Guillaume André Find out why Expression Design may become a part of your daily workflow. Creative professionals will find many features within Expression Design that they’re accustomed to in other graphic production software. Read more The Designer Role in the Designer/Developer Collaboration - Part 1 With the adoption of Windows Presentation Foundation, the possibilities to create sophisticated user experiences have increased exponentially. Dax Pandhi illustrates in his article how this increases the importance of interface design in general, and affects the role of the designer in the development process. Read more Expression Encoder: Publishing Video to Silverlight Streaming Service In spite of the increasing popularity of streaming video on the web, reating content – and finding the right host – can prove to be a challenging task even today. Jim Thill provides a step-by-step tutorial for adding a rich media experience to your blog or website by encoding and publishing video to the Silverlight Streaming Service on Windows Live. Read more MIX essentials Save the date! MIX Essentials is coming to Belgium on the 24th of April 2008. Get the very best of MIX (sold out) in a 1-day 'MIX Essentials' conference with great local & international professional speakers. And a special guest keynote by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation. Registration and detailed info in the next edition of this newsletter! Read more MSDN Designer Academic Alliance The Designer Academic Alliance is the recent addition to the MSDN Academic Alliance program which is the easiest and most inexpensive way for students and faculty to get the latest Microsoft software they need for teaching and research purposes. Read more Lynda.com online training From understanding the concept of smart web design, to creating, editing, and maintaining web site, instructor Joe Marini, Group Product Manager at Microsoft, gives his insider tips for real-world web site design using Expression Web. Read more © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Trademarks | Privacy Statement