Interaction design

Microsoft launched their vision for productivity in the future. When I saw the video for the first time I wondered whether this is stupidity or a imaginable outcome of the next ten years?

Microsoft vision video

Here are some reflections about the vision:

Productivity is browsing?

If you take a good look at the video you only see people browsing their calenders, charts, interactive tables and what not more. Is that working? Ever tried to type a letter on a touchscreen? I am sure it is not nearly as fast and accurate as a normal keyboard. So maybe multi touch applications are not the best means for entering data or typing a letter. I can image that text can be dictated with speech recognition, but why not operate the whole application with speech than? In my opinion working is creating new value in the form of documents, graphs, data, analysis or applications. Applications that increase the productivity are key in the future, but Microsoft failed completely in developing a vision on improving productivity.

Productivity is less intuitive?

Another aspect of the future vision is that the users know how to use the application. Is that because the design is more intuitive? In all aspects of the movie you see panels sliding open with more information, often without a menu! Are we supposed to smell where the content is? To me it does not seem to be more intuitive, only when one has learned this through experimentation. Is that the future, having a worse usability but more intuitive usage when a user went through the steep learning curve?

Productivity is simplifying the work?

All applications in the video show very clearly just a few options like menus or buttons on each screen. Therefore it looks very easy and simple but how does that relate the complex world today that will be a lot more complex in the near future. Microsoft is struggling to fit all options into Word and Excel, and they are growing! I was hoping that Microsoft would come up with a new way of navigating or using the interface but it seems they just left out 99% of the functionalities.

A glimpse ahead, I don’t think so?

Too sum up, this vision is not realistic and will not be realized for sure. Multi touch can of course be used in many ways but it seems the means are becoming more important then the goal of it. Everything just looks cooler, but what does it add? Also the idea of only having Microsoft programs is a sign of pure blindness, more and more applications will fulfill specific needs and Microsoft is already losing the battle of browsers and media players.

What the Microsoft vision excludes is how new applications and technology can change the way we work. What is considered work? Maybe working in virtual teams is well accepted and maybe we don’t sit behind a desk anymore. In my opinion this video shows what multi touch can be for us, but is far off from being a vision for productivity in the future!