Jensen Harris, in 90 minutes of awesomeness, talks at Mix ‘08 about the design process which led to the creation of the ribbon toolbar which appeared in Microsoft Office 2007 and has become a widely used design pattern. Revealed in the talk are many prototypes of early designs as well as the story behind the ‘ribbon’ name. Jensen still works at Microsoft and is now working on Office 2010.

Doubling up on its bet on tablet PCs, Microsoft is working on the dual-screen Courier booklet. Using both pen and gesture based interaction methods, the technology incorporates many of the interaction models we’ve seen developed over the past 10 years. Most interestingly is the fact that it is the first piece of technology to emphasize the light-weight notebook form factor while utilizing two displays. The potential is imaginative as usual and it will be fun to see where this leads.

An oldie, but goodie, Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, speaks at Stanford’s Human-Computer Interaction Seminar on topics discussed in his book Sketching User Experiences. A little more lengthy than his recent talk at Mix ‘09, Bill goes into greater detail about the importance of sketching in design. He also provides examples of how sketching can be applied to the design process in a meaningful way.

Project Natal, a gestural input device, is being promoted by Microsoft this year at E3 is attempting to promote their ubiquitous computing platform. Hot off the heals of several other videos promoting Microsoft’s vision for the future, Project Natal focuses on the video game arena. Nonetheless, the vision is illuminating and enticing.

Microsoft’s Dane Storrusten directs this short concept video imagining a future where technology is invisible to end users but allows the full benefits of gestural recognition, context awareness, and more. The video is one of two videos produced by INVIVIA. Also check out August de los Reye’s slightly less intricate concept video for the home environment.

Bill Buxton Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences, takes the first 30 minutes of the MIX ‘09 keynote. One of my favoUrite speakers, Bill talks about the importance and power of sketching user experiences. Citing many examples, Bill stresses the importance of experience design in a bad economy and thinking about the transitions between states and not simply the states themselves.

These things are far too important to take seriously.
- Bill Buxton

Hot off the heels of Microsoft’s Business Division’s video short being released, Seattle-based Oh, Hello has posted a longer (6 minute) variation. The video presents many concepts designed by the Office Labs team at Microsoft in the realms of surface computing and natural user interfaces.

Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, has been showing their vision for the future where nearly every surface will be an interactive display. With the looming battle between companies over patented gestures as mentioned in Dan Saffer’s talk, it is now an arms race to see which company will infiltrate homes and office with gestural and touch based systems. Regardless, it is great to see some of the concepts explored in the video.

Lachlan Cash from Microsoft demonstrates using touch technologies for business applications. Moving beyond rotating and resizing photos, Microsoft Dynamics has adapted Microsoft Surface for use as a wearhouse management tool. And while Surface in it’s table top form may not make it into offices very quickly, with Windows 7 supporting multi-touch, there is a great chance that other form factors will.

To be presented at CHI 2009, Nano Touch uses a touch sensitive input on the back-side of devices to get around fingers obstructing the screen on the front-side of the device. A big problem on very small displays, nano touch is poised to be highly utilized in future electronics. The Nano Touch has been designed by Patrick Baudisch and Gerry Chu at Micorosft Research and in partnership with Hasso Plattner Institute.