Microsoft seeks to add the UX factor

In the race to give the best to the consumer, companies are fast catching up with one another on technology. This, in turn, is triggering another race — to find a differentiator, a USP.

At Microsoft, the buzzword is user experience or ‘UX’ as they call in the company.

From server-related technologies to simple applications, the company is now consciously focusing on UX.

That means also focussing on the look and feel of applications in terms of colour and ease of use.

Deepak Menon, group design manager of Microsoft India Development Centre (IDC), said UX is emerging as a major differentiator.

“It’s no more plain colour or some colourful packaging of apps. The experience is getting embedded into an application right from the stage of conceptualisation,” he said.

A 20-strong team of designers at the IDC has been contributing to Microsoft products globally, including the Windows Phone 7 and Bing search engine.

“It’s like a car. Every car in a particular category has a steering, four wheels, comfortable seating and modern dash board. What differentiates is the design and colour. Now, it is becoming equally applicable to technology and software products as well,” he said.

“User over technology” is emerging to be the key word in the Redmond-based company’s product design strategy.

Windows 7 is among the first of those products where the company tried to maximise the X factor by adding more ‘experience’ to simpler applications like a calculator. The company used glass finish to the skin of the product.

In Bing, the search engine being popularised by the company, the X factor is made more visible. “When you search in a typical search for a requirement, you might end up getting several blue links. We went beyond the blue link pattern and used photographs. If you are searching for books, you will get the cover page of all the books in that category. If you are searching for a mobile phone, you will get photographs of all the mobile phone models that fit your requirement,” he explains.

In fact, the internal strategies of Microsoft are putting the experience factor on par with two other key factors in a product design - business and technology. “It used to be the B (business) and T (technology) matrix for designing and selling a product all through. But, things have changed now. It is a BXT matrix now.
Right from sourcing to analysis to the entire lifecycle of the development of a product, the design and user experience have become key differentiators,” he said.

But, as a differentiator, are the efforts on enriching the experience adding to the sales figures? “Should be. It’s like advertising for a cricket match. Will it help in selling more tickets? May be. It’s hard to say. But, enriching the user experience will take product closer to the users and also the potential users,” he said.

However, there seems to be more than the graphic or visual user interface developing at Microsoft. The company is currently researching on the natural user interface. “Face recognition, voice, gesturing, etc, are the technologies that are being developed. The user interface will definitely go through a major change once these technologies become available.”