User experience in the Microsoft world [Always On]

As I noted before, Microsoft these days is talking a lot about the user experience.

Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president for strategic and emerging business development at Microsoft just published an article for AlwaysOn, entitled, The User Experience Matters.

“In March, Microsoft kicked off our new People-Ready business vision — centered on the reality that people drive business success. It’s a natural extension of our founding vision of empowering people through software and speaks directly to our vision of the user experience. So, in this column, I define what I mean by a great user experience, briefly discuss the latest trends (AJAX, Mashups, Web 2.0, SaaS) and then focus in on two critical needs: first, a richer UI for web applications and second, the client on the desktop for certain types of experiences. Then I’ll talk about how new user experiences and technologies on the web and the desktop environment present compelling new opportunities for startups.”

The Workplace blog comments that “this article is worth reading not because it talks about user experience beyond the web interface but because it discusses how Microsoft fits into the Web 2.0 world. Dan covers smart clients, Vista, AJAX and the Microsoft Startup Zone. Visit MSDN’s User Interface Design & Development website to see how Microsoft approaches the user experience of its own products.”