Microsoft’s first Build conference just wrapped up last week, and boy was it exciting. I’ll have to be careful when I write this post so as to not sound like a “Microsoft Fanboy”, but the reality was, everything that was shown at Microsoft Build was incredibly impressive, amazingly innovative, and game changing for our industry. It was hard to find much of anything wrong at Build. If you are software developer, game developer, designer, technologist for any platform, you need to pay attention to Windows 8.

While the big headliner of the week was definitely Windows 8, a key point that was missed was:

Microsoft has shifted its entire company to focus on user centric design.

For those that haven’t attended a Microsoft conference before let me explain something. All Microsoft conferences are extremely technical, including the keynote presentations. Build was expected to be no different.

After a Windows 8 demo that blew the minds off of attendees and the press, Microsoft developers ate lunch as fast as humanly possible and raced back for an afternoon general keynote session. Everyone was expecting a demonstration focused around how to develop code for this phenomenal new operating system. That didn’t happen.

Microsoft Shocks Developers

Instead, Director of Program Management for Windows User Experience, Jensen Harris took the stage. What followed was a nearly two-hour presentation that can be summed up in one sentence: If you don’t care about user experience, if you don’t aim for pixel perfection, you need to start looking for new work.

The presentation demonstrated all the hard work that has gone into Windows 8. The user centric approach. The labs and testing. The incredible research Microsoft is doing. Microsoft even showed “painting tests” they ran with users using paper and paint, trying find out natural spots where people find it easy to access on a tablet screen, and what areas are harder to touch.

As a User Experience guy, I was ecstatic! Microsoft finally realized that having Bill Gates literally invent and demonstrate the tablet 10 years before iPad, wasn’t enough. They realized it is no longer acceptable for software to simply build, compile, and run. Users need to be delighted by bold software that is simple, yet magical. Users need to enjoy using software, or frankly they will not use the software.

The User Experience Bomb Dropped, What Happened Next?

What followed all week at Microsoft Build was session after session that had some form of user experience element. Even the “geekiest” of the sessions on writing software that takes advantage of hardware peripherals like printers, USB 3.0, mice, keyboards, and more, was completely focused around user experience.

One would have thought this would have scared off the loyal Microsoft development community. What happened was quite the opposite! The energy in that place was electric! In hallway conversations, everyone was talking user experience. Everyone wanted to talk to me about Expression Blend. Everyone wanted to know about prototyping. It was quite frankly one of those moments in life where you sit back and go “Something insanely great is about to come out of this”.

How Did Microsoft Do It?

Bill Gates foreshadowed what was about to occur at the All Things Digital Conference with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg back in 2007. Bill Gates said “I would give a lot to have Steve’s taste”. Being the competitive poker player that Bill Gates was, he was going to do something about it. In fact he went on to explain his dream of creating a new tablet device that would be used everywhere, enable touch, pen, keyboard, and more.

Over the last few years Microsoft has re-invented itself. It has re-structured itself to be a more lean, user experience focused organization with clear focus and vision to change the world. They hired an all-star team of user experience specialists, unbeknownst to Apple. Experts that created Amazon.com’s complex navigation structures and made it dead simple to find and buy things online. User experience experts from Industrial Engineering backgrounds with over 20 years of experience.

Microsoft Has Been Shifting For Years

I had the privilege and honor to fly down to New York City for the Launch of Expression 4 and present following Bill Buxton, Principle User Experience Researcher at Microsoft. Talking to him for 5 minutes made me realize that things were changing at Microsoft.

What followed that same year was the launch of Microsoft Kinect, a piece of technology that quickly become the fastest consumer electronics device sold of all time. The second act is now to re-invent Windows and tie together Gaming, Television, Phone, PC, and Mobile Devices like tablets and slates.

The Windows 8 user interface is awesome. To steal a word from Apple, it’s magical. You really have to see it to understand what I mean. Let me give you a taste:

Want to log into your tablet? Just select a few points on a picture as your password.

Want to print to your printer at home? Just print because Windows just installs printers and any device on your network automatically, inducing downloading software specific to the device.

Want to turn on your computer from a complete off state? Just hit power and watch it turn on faster than you can turn on your monitor.

Want to share a link with a friend, an application, web site, text, or pictures? Just swipe on the side and hit share.

Want to use multiple applications at the same time and maybe dock a stock ticker to the top of screen while you take notes at a board meeting? Easy with the Windows 8 Multi-Tasking.

Want to see all your pictures from facebook, Flickr, your home computers, all in one beautiful screen? Simple click pictures.

Want to buy a new computer and don’t want to setup all your settings all over again? Not a problem, Windows saves all your settings to the cloud.

Do you have a few different computers you use and hate having different software, settings, and more on each one? That won’t ever happen again with the cloud sync.

Find it hard to type while holding a tablet? No problem Microsoft has placed the keys on the sides to make it easy to reach all the keys. Still find it hard to type? No problem Microsoft includes support for stylists so you can just write notes.

Want to throw a video up onto the screen, or browse the Internet on your television? Windows 8 lets you throw up content right to the television magically.

Want to share files with someone beside you without using USB, Emails, or CD’s? No problem, slate devices have NFC technology so just tap them together and you instantly share files magically over the air even on airplanes!

Developers Developers Developers

Want more? I could go on for a while. Here’s the kicker: all of this works already on the device I’m writing this blog post on. Microsoft just gave these devices away to 5,000 developers. They are all building software for Windows 8 a year before launch. Don’t believe me? Talk to the people that couldn’t stop starring at my device at the airport as I wrote this article. I had to demo the unit and let them try it out. Windows 8 is pure magic. And it’s magic because Microsoft took a user centric approach to designing, developing, and building the operating system.

There are hundreds of innovations that Microsoft has implemented that don’t even come close to existing in other platforms. Even things you would have thought they might have copied from Apple or Google, have not. I can honestly say the entire OS is unique and different. And different would be one thing, but the reality is, it does what you expect it to do. The more you use the Metro UI in Windows 8, the more excited you get.

Yes it’s early, and yes the OS won’t be released till next year, but one gets the sense that it will only get better. I have a “hunch” the best secrets are still being kept close to Steve Ballmer and Steven Sinofsky’s chest. We are on the verge of finally being blown away by Microsoft after giving Apple what seems to be the most incredible head start of all time.

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