User Experience | Software Development in the Real World

June 5, 2011 By miguelcarrasco 100 Comments

Social Media, Digital Marketing, and User Experience

Taking Technology to New Heights

I’ve always been a big believer in technologies ability to reshape our lives. Over the last 20 years you have seen technology make inroads in our enterprise environments. The big shift you are seeing now, why the iPad is so popular, why the XBOX has sold over 55 million consoles, is consumers are driving technology. Why does this matter? When consumers start to drive technology adoption, the rules change. Users want technology that just works, looks fantastic, is enjoyable to use, and gets them excited to show their friends. Users don’t want viruses, keyboards, mice to plug in. Users want to swipe, touch, feel, and talk to the technology. Users want to connect with their friends, and share their accomplishments.

Almost a year ago I made a big shift and joined Imaginet to focus solely on Social Media, Digital Marketing, and User Experience. Why do these fancy words matter? I believe there are three key reasons people will choose to use your product, over a competitor’s product:

Connection, Beautiful interfaces, Joy of using technology

Imaginet Interactive was born, and we already working with some amazing companies making a huge difference in the way they do business. What makes us unique is our ability to blend these core principles, with software development excellence.

We are currently working on the largest SharePoint Implementation in the world. We are creating custom desktop experiences for Sport Chek. We are creating customized internal portals for airlines. We are creating world-class web sites for large corporations.

I’m not sharing this to brag about how awesome we are, I’m sharing this to make a point.

Companies that evolve and learn to embrace and understand Social Media, Digital Marketing, and User Experience will leave their competitors in the dust.

Those that don’t, will be left wondering what hit them. I would even go as far to say that everything you think you now about IT and Software Development is about to change. Even the Social Media Winnipeg scene has changed. The City of Winnipeg even has a page dedicated to Social Media in Winnipeg.

Filed Under: Digital Marketing, Social Media, User Experience Tagged With: digital marketing, imaginet interactive, social media, user experience, winnipeg

February 1, 2011 By miguelcarrasco 106 Comments

I need your help to get to Microsoft MIX 2011

Microsoft Mix is one of my favorite conferences that I haven’t been to. What do I mean? Well every year I head to the MVP Summit, and every year I hear how amazing Mix was last year, and how much more amazing the upcoming MIX is going to be!

This year I thought I would take a stab at submitting two entries to Microsoft Mix, and I was pleased to have been selected for the final round of voting. There are some pretty amazing speakers in the running for open call spots, so I’m excited just to be on the same list with some of these guys and gals.

If you have time, please click on the links below to take you to my MIX sessions. You will be able to vote for me, and hopefully when the dust settles, you will be able to download and watch my MIX 2011 talk live!

Mobile First Design – Laser Focus on User Experience

Mobile is taking the world by storm. Your clients demand beautiful experiences on mobile devices, as well as the desktop. However for many developers and designers, the mobile application is the last piece you think about when developing solutions. What if you could design your solutions by starting with the mobile? Could this approach actually benefit applications written for the desktop? By laser focusing on the most important aspects of the application, and designing for mobile devices first, you ensure your application allows users to perform tasks quickly and with grace.

Please vote here

Building Engaging User Experiences with SharePoint 2010 and Expression Studio

The world of software and web development has changed. If users aren’t drawn in and engaged with your web sites, applications, or internal portals, they will go elsewhere… fast. Never before has it been so important for SharePoint developers to focus on the user experience. During this session, you will learn 10 practical ways to customize SharePoint to ensure you capture your customer’s attention, make things easy to do, and ensure they never leave. Based on real world experiences, this session is sure to give you some practical tips, tricks, and advice you can use immediately. Learn to leverage SharePoint 2010 tools to customize your experiences, and make them unique.

Please vote here

Filed Under: Events, Microsoft, User Experience

July 4, 2010 By miguelcarrasco 110 Comments

The way we interact with computers is about to change in a huge way

Frankly the title is wrong. It’s much bigger than that.

Do you remember watching Minority Report and getting completely excited about what could be possible in future user interfaces? Microsoft has invested heavily in different ways to interact with the pc, Project Natal which was recently renamed to Kinect is set to be released in October and cost only a mind-blowing $150 USF. It’s going to allow you to control your entire home media center experience, not just play video games.

Recently I ran into a presentation by John Underkoffler at TED. It was an amazing demonstration of the real Minority Report Interface that he created for the movie all of us loved. Watch the TED presentation below, but before you do try and put the video into its true context. It’s not about the gloves or being able to wave your hands in the air to make things happen. To me what makes this type of research and technology so incredible and “beautiful” is how the pc is now able to learn about its environment, where it is, where objects are, and help us in the real world.

Traditionally when you interact with a personal computer, you have to sit in front of a screen in order to use it. Even new advancements like the iPad or iPhone are really just new form factors to a personal computer. They are truly revolutionary devices for sure, and I love my iPad, but they all are not truly leaps forward in shifting a key concept.

I interact with my computer by using its user interface.

What is about to happen in our lifetime, in fact, in the next few years…

The computer interacts with me, my real world objects, and my space.

To be sure there will always be the need for both types of experiences, but I am making a bet that this substantial shift in the way the technology interacts with us is about to usher in a whole new era of innovations that will make the videos on this article seem boring within the next 5 years.

At the end of the video Bill Gates asks a great question “When is this coming?”. And that has always been the hardest part for technology, software, and innovation. Great ideas are great, but only if you can make them reality. Bill Gates understands this better than anyone, and is one of the best minds on our planet at making things that are “cool”, actually mainstream.

Microsoft Kinect is coming in October. A revolutionary game changing device priced at $150 USF. Anybody will be able to go to their favorite electronics store and get one. Get ready for your world to change. Get ready for Microsoft to learn an incredible amount about how humans work and move and want to their computers to interact with them. It really has very little to do with games when you take the blinders off.

Also get ready to never again get a phone call asking you how to use the remote.

Filed Under: Microsoft, User Experience Tagged With: kinect, Natal

December 12, 2009 By miguelcarrasco 185 Comments

Tech Days 2009

Things have been super busy at Anvil Digital so all I’ve had time for is twitter these days. If you don’t follow me yet, make sure you add me http://www.twitter.com/miguelcarrasco as I will more than likely save blog posts for deep discussions and thoughts over the next year.

That said, if you are a Winnipeg Software Developer or IT Pro, make sure you sign up for Tech Days 2009. Time is almost up to sign up for this insane show packed with real world deep dive content! I will be presenting on Expression Blend 3.0, the world best user interface design application on the market. Don’t believe me? come check it out! With forty 200+ level sessions, Tech Days is the learning conference on both current technologies and new products like Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and much more.

Expression Blend for Developers

Not a designer? Overwhelmed by Expression Blend? Not a problem! We’ll show you how to use Expression Blend to create advanced and polished user interfaces for business applications, consumer applications, multimedia projects, games or anything in between. We’ll cover features of Expression Blend from a developer’s perspective and show how it works in tandem with Visual Studio throughout the development process. You’ll learn how to create professional-looking user interfaces and visual elements – even if you don’t think of yourself as an interface designer.

Filed Under: Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Expression, Software Development, TechDays 2009, User Experience Tagged With: Software Development, tech days 2009, winnipeg

May 20, 2009 By miguelcarrasco 98 Comments

Silverlight vs. Flash SmackDown

The Silverlight vs. Flash SmackDown was a smashing success!

Thanks to everyone that made it out to the Silverlight vs. Flash SmackDown event yesterday in Winnipeg. It was a lot of fun to present the content on the Silverlight side, and have some friendly banter back and fourth with Darren Osadchuks who presented Flash.

We had nearly 200 people in attendance and completely jam packed the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library. In fact we had to get an “overflow” room setup last minute that we streamed the event to via the new web site: TechSmackDown.com. TechSmackDown will have all the event video footage and PowerPoint’s posted shortly.

Everyone was glued to their seats for the entire 2 and a half hour event. In fact when asked if anyone wanted to take a break, nobody raised their hands. A ton of prizes were given out thanks to our sponsors: Anvil Digital, Protegra, Microsoft, redgate, Apress, O’Reilly, Wrox, and CDot Networks. The event was the first event put on by all three tech user groups in the city: Winnipeg.net User Group, Flash in the Peg, and New Media Manitoba.

If you can’t wait to play with some of the technologies that were shown last night, make sure to check out: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/ You can download trial versions of Expression Studio Tools, or even try out Expression Blend 3 Preview!

So for those that want to check out the demo’s for themselves, lets do a quick run through right now.

Sketchflow Rocks The House

I think Sketchflow is probably the single most innovative technology to come out of Microsoft in the last decade. I know it sounds crazy but its just true! After all the innovation we had done in software, 70% of all IT projects still fail! Sketchflow is going to change that! I started by showing how to draw with wiggly styles in Sketchflow and present the client with options. We then moved into creating documentation from our sketches like magic! I’m pretty sure I saw tears of happiness in most people’s eyes, followed by some crazy applause!

We then moved on to actually creating an awesome application by importing a PhotoShop file, and then making an application in Silverlight using blend that followed all the styles that were created in PhotoShop! Many thanks to Jon Harris for getting me ready to rock for this demo.

Silverligh Dominates Video

I showed how the YouTube experience of watching Big Buck Bunny was pretty bad, as was Vimeo. I then loaded up Expression Media Encoder and showed off all the amazing features it had and produced a pretty cool video. I then showed the new Big Buck Bunny video with Adaptive Streaming with Silverlight. People couldn’t believe the quality and the features it had. Skipping, rewinding, amazing quality of video… running on a Mac! On Internet at a Library!

Some other great Silverlight Examples

In closing I tried to show off some of the great implementations out there that take advantage of Silverlight! Here are some of them:

The message was clear, designers and developers need to find a way to work together better! Silverlight and the Expression tools offers something unique to the equation with Sketchflow, which will launch in Expression Studio 3.

Fun was had by all! Check out the massive crowd! And this is just one room, the other overflow room had another 30 or so people watching across the hall on a live stream!

Darren did an awesome job explaining the entire Adobe Flash Platform. As a .net guy, I must admit it was pretty impressive as well.

Here’s a wide angle shot of the crowd! Our goal was to get designer and developers in the same room and really pump them up about building awesome web applications! Silverlight vs. Flash was the title of the event, but at the end of the day, I think it was really clear that everyone is going to win in the Microsoft vs. Flash Battle of the Titans.

As a reminder to everyone that was at the event, the slides and video of the event will be posted very shortly at TechSmackDown.com.

Filed Under: Adobe, Blend, Flash, Microsoft Expression, Silverlight, User Experience Tagged With: Flash, Silverlight, Smackdown