Thank you Twitter! I was sitting in a session on productivity, when the @WPCDC Twitter account tweeted:
@WPCDC: See Bill Buxton speak now at the #WPC10 Expo Theater – back of the Expo Hall by MPN Booth #484!
I up and left that session, and rushed over. (I have got to figure out my way around this place. Went down a huge staircase and up another to get to the Expo. Needless to say, I was out of breath.)
Kinect (formerly Project Natal), the new controller-less technology for Xbox, has been the center of a lot of hype since its first announcement. Bill Buxton, a principal researcher at Microsoft, fights against the notion that newer is better by presenting these two scenarios:
- Kinect in the home.
- Kinect on an airplane.
Clearly you can’t be jumping around in an airplane.
Similarly, conference calls are used to join people remotely, but on an airplane you could lose your job by sharing confidential information aloud. The focus is what is appropriate technology for the situation.
The four watches above utilize “touch” technology. The first allows you to swipe number on the screen, which then are shown on the display. There is a touch screen keyboard on the second watch, and with the third you can touch different areas around the watch to activate a compass, thermometer, etc. The final watch has a phyiscal keyboard.
Now which watch is the outlier?
The majority of engineers’ gut choice is the watch with the physical keyboard. However, the instructions could be the same for both the watch with the physical keyboard and the watch with the touch screen keyboard. The outlier is the watch that takes input via swipes. When looking at the watch, you wouldn’t easily guess that’s how you input data. Bill says there lies the difference between a designer and an engineer. It’s a good point, and an instinct I have to fight myself on.
Finally, guess what year the watch with the swipe technology was developed.
Answer: 1984
Buxton has written columns for Business Week, and in October 2009, he wrote on this very topic. Tomorrow, he returns to WPC during the A-List feature of the morning keynote. You should be able to watch it live at Digital WPC starting at 9 AM ET. (Bill Clinton is also keynoting tomorrow, and all cameras and video are banned, so if the live stream isn’t happening, that’s why.)
On that note, I return to the stage during the same feature with the rest of the S2B students to share our accomplishments with Partners. (Students interested in the training and submitting their resume to potential employers, register with Experience, Inc.) If you don’t catch it live, the recorded session of the keynote will be up later in the day.
Note to Bill Buxton: My apologies for the awkwardness when I came after your presentation. My intention was to tell you how much I appreciate your passion in fighting for the user, but I tripped up cause I was in “Tech celebrity!” awe.
Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Student Insider, S2B, S2BWPC, WPC, WPC10