Thank you for buying this book. It means that you are concerned about making a great Windows application. That’s something we appreciate.
Windows is a platform. This means that we cannot make Windows successful and valuable without your help. Your applications are what make Windows great. The better your applications are, the better the platform is, and ultimately our users are happier. And they are our shared users. We need to take care of them together. This book is one example of how Microsoft is trying to help make Windows a better place for our users.
Making a good Windows application used to be about making a good user interface. That’s not enough anymore. Making a great Windows application is about making a great user experience. The user experience is about the end-to-end relationship that the user has with your application. To illustrate the difference, sometimes the best user experience is no user interface at all. Every one of our users has experienced unnecessary or unintelligible error messages, gone through terrible installation procedures, or been forced to deal with the lack of our foresight at what might cause them problems or confusion. Every user has been unable to complete their task, been unable to find a command, or gotten frustrated after finding that Help didn’t help. This is their pain and our joint responsibility. It’s why we called this book Windows User Experience instead of Windows User Interface.
Delivering software with a great user experience is not easy. It takes work, it takes testing, and it takes a real desire to connect with our users. At Microsoft, we know just how hard this is. Testament to this fact is that you can find examples of difficult user experiences in applications that have shipped in the past and that currently ship from Microsoft. Please realize that these deficiencies are not intentional violations of the principles in this book, but are the result of decisions made without the benefit of hindsight. This book tries to articulate that hindsight so we can all benefit from the experience.
Your role is clear. You’re reading the book. You’re looking at your application with a critical eye. You’re listening hard to what your customers want to accomplish, and what is keeping them from accomplishing their goals. Microsoft’s commitment here needs to be clear as well. This book, our user experience Web site, and other initiatives that will come from Microsoft over the coming months and years are all about Microsoft taking a leadership role in giving our customers the richest, simplest, and most satisfying experience running applications on Windows. We can’t do it without your continuing to build great applications or without your feedback. When there are things you need us to do, we need to know. We look forward to hearing how we can help. And we are even more excited to see what fantastic applications you ship.
The Windows User Experience Team
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ui/
winui@microsoft.com
You can order a paperback edition of this book through the MSDN Bookstore.
Fundamentals of Designing User Interaction
Design Specifications and Guidelines