Digital Thoughts @ Wesstyware

Before I even begin writing this post, I want to clarify that this is not a review of a video game. For the record, I just started playing the game and I’m really enjoying it so far. My intentions with this post is to document a UX issue that could have been caught with some extra UX analysis but an example outside of the regular domain for UX discussion, (which is usually business applications.

Disclaimer

For the record, the content contained within this blog post is based solely on my experience with the Xbox 360 version game and the character import feature. This, in no way, reflects the thoughts or opinions of anyone at BioWare or Electronic Arts.

Plus, the game is fantastic as per all BioWare titles that I have played.

A Quick Introduction

For all those people out there who read my blog and are not video game players, Mass Effect is a series of games from BioWare for the PC and Xbox 360. The first game was released back in 2007 and the second game was released recently on January 26th of this year. One of the interesting features of the Mass Effect games is the ability to make storyline decisions that effect the outcome of the game. For example, when you come across the last “queen” of an alien species, you can choose to whether or not to kill it. This decision ultimately decides whether or not the alien species will become extinct.

With all sorts of different decisions like the example above in the game, it would be a pity to see the consequences of your decisions disappear because they made a sequel to the game. Different game means different save file, right? Not exactly. In the case of Mass Effect, you are able to import your character information from the first game (assuming you finished the game) and continue the story of Mass Effect with all the consequences of the decisions you made in your previous game.

This is an amazing feature and I was really pumped to hear about it. The idea of continuing through to the new instalment of the series with all of the decisions that I made in the game world carried over is a fantastic one. Turns out there was a little more to it.

My User Experience

After playing a bunch of Dragon Age, I was very excited to get into the sequel for Mass Effect, and because of this I pre-ordered my copy from Amazon and patiently waited for launch day.

It arrived for the weekend, and my better half and I prepared for our night playing this amazing game. We loaded up the game, went to the character import tool, and waited to select our save file from the first Mass Effect.

Loading complete. Result: No games found.

Huh. Well, let’s try setting the storage device to make sure it is pointing at the memory card.

Loading complete. Same result.

That is the short of it. Most of our evening was spent reading up on how to make this work. Eventually we came across this article explaining things. Turns out that when you beat the first Mass Effect, a file is created on the Xbox 360 that is not visible through the regular interface where you see your other save files. This is a file that is just not visible by any regular means provided by a game or that operating system.

The Red Ring of Death

In our case, our first Xbox 360 red ringed and needed to be replaced. Considering that we had access to memory cards to move our save files to the new console we figured we were covered. Apparently, that was an incorrect assumption.

Not to be deterred, we went out to find a copy of Mass Effect 1 (as we lent out our copy) and returned home to beat it again, which made the hidden file on our hard drive and life was good.

The UX Fail

I suppose you could say that my case was an special case. I mean, how many players are going to be playing the second Mass Effect game on a different console, have their copy of the first game lent out to a friend, and only realize that they need the game when rental stores are closing?

The last two problems could be chalked up to bad timing. But the Xbox 360 failure happening between the release of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2? Not only has almost every Xbox 360 owner I know had their console die on them, but I have heard of others that have had the same hardware issues.

Considering that these hardware issues are common play with the Xbox 360, why would you consider adding a feature that is strictly dependent on the hardware? Hence, the UX fail and my reason for writing this post.

In the end this experience was not detrimental to my game. I am playing the game and really enjoying it. Still, when we open up a game only to have the excitement whisked away by features that appear to be broken, it takes away from some of the magic and ultimately makes me question the value in my purchase.

The Point

The point is simple: when you are developing features that live in the unexplored regions of your software genre make sure you spend the time identifying all the possible failure points. It doesn’t mean that you have to support all of them, but you will probably want to try and cover the ones that are likely to come up.

The other point: showing people in Developer Land that user experiences live outside of their business and web applications. The exist in all types of software, even games. And although they can be fantastic games, they can still fail with the user experience in some capacity.

Catch you on the flip side.

Resources

Mass Effect Homepage

BioWare Homepage

Joystiq – Game Informer: Xbox 360 at 54.2 percent failure rate (August 17th, 2009)

Note: I realize that a survey done by a magazine may not be the best source, but the Xbox 360 hardware issues are well known in the gaming community, and this article shows that there are at least more than just myself with the problem.

Last night (January 28th, 2010) was the first meeting for the Winnipeg .NET User Group for 2010 and things are shaping up to be a great year of .NET awesomeness for us. That aside, this year is the where the Wessty (that’s me) officially becomes involved with the group. With that, I thought I would write a quick post about what we covered last night at the meeting.

The Headliner: Uwe Schmitz

Last night we were treated to a presentation from Uwe Schmitz, easily one of the most brilliant developers I have met (other than yours truly, of course). He demonstrated to the group a Microsoft project called Composite Client Application Guidance (formerly known as PRISM) using the Silverlight to build an example live on stage.

Uwe getting ready to bring the thunder...

Personally, I really enjoyed the presentation and it was not only because I was interested in learning about the technology and I have a secret relationship with Silverlight as a whole. Uwe went through the basics of CAG, from a high level, through the architecture and pieces that make up the software, right through to starting and finishing a simple example to see the tech in action.

His presentation style was dead on for the audience and the technology we were seeing. Although I understand Silverlight, for the most part, Silverlight does not have a huge piece of the pie in the Winnipeg .NET development community. Uwe walked us through the “gotchas” that many people would fight with who are starting out with the technology (that being XAML), and dove right into the implementation of our Silverlight CAG application.

The Point

You might be wondering the point of this post, and the point was to give you a quick explanation of what you can expect at Winnipeg .NET User Group meeting. A meeting consists of free delicious food, a fantastic presentation by an expert in the best of .NET related technology, an opportunity to network with your fellow developers, and learn about what is happening within the Winnipeg development community.

Winnipeg Software Development Events

In conclusion, if you are reading this and you weren’t sitting there with me, then consider coming out and checking out some of the upcoming events.  Here is a list of some of the upcoming events in the ‘Peg covered by Kelly last night while warming up the crowd:

• Geek Girl Dinner (February 9th, 2010)
  

  Kelly warming up the crowd before the big show

• 3rd Winnipeg .NET Code Camp (February 28th, 2010)
• Next Winnipeg .NET User Group (March 6th, 2010)

Check out the links. Bring your friends. Learn something. They are free and they give you the chance to see what is happening outside of your little development bubble. Plus, you get the chance to meet your peers in the industry and knowing who else is out there is never a bad thing.

Catch you on the flip side.

This is first post of an on-going series of posts from Wesstyware on the ZVGQ v2.0 project. To find a listing of all the posts in the series, please refer to the posts section of the project page for the ZVGQ project.

Introduction

A very close friend of mine, kiggidykev used to be part of the team for zanyvgquotes.com many years ago. In late 2009, after not being part of the project for many years, he was given the chance to take possession of the site and decided to seize the opportunity to bring some life back into the site.

He approached me with the idea of working on the site with him, where I would take point on the development side and he would take point on the content. After looking over the site, and the source I came to the conclusion that we needed to build the site from scratch and port over the current content.

The Catch

The catch is simple: I am a .NET developer and have been my entire career. That means all of my development strengths lie within the realm of Microsoft technologies and tool. ZVGQ is hosted on a Linux based server, hence the catch. Although, after thinking about it for a while, I too found the chance to seize an opportunity.

I have been a user of Microsoft Expression since WPF was still in beta. Version 2 of the software proved to be useful, but not really full enough to be used on its own. With version 3 release in 2009, I felt as though the software was ready. The thing is without some kind of proof or personal experience showing that it would hold its own, it felt odd for me to recommend that as a tool to my colleagues and co-workers

Enter ZVGQ.com…

The project is a real web development project that can benefit from the tools that the Expression Suite bring to the table. I see the ZVGQ project as the opportunity for me to see if Expression Suite is all that it can be. Here is how I plan on using the software:

Expression Blend: Prototyping & Silverlight Development

Prototyping out this site is a must, and SketchFlow is the best tool for the job. On top of that, I plan on revisiting Blend when we tackle some Silverlight development as there are a few components where I see Silverlight producing a far richer UX for the users of ZVGQ.

Expression Web: HTML/PHP/JavaScript Development

Web is meant to be a web development tool for all types of web development mark up and code, including those that live outside of Redmond. This will be the test to see whether Expression can hold its own considering that all the technologies that will be used within Web will not have stemmed from the depths of Redmond.

Expression Design: Screen Designs

I’m not a designer, nor do I think I have the abilities of a designer. Still, we will want to build some sample screens that have some styling applied so we know what the site is actually going to look like before we release it. For that, we are going to use Expression Design.

Expression Encoder: Media Updates

ZVGQ has a large amount of media that will be updated which includes videos. The plan is to update these videos using Encoder to test the waters and see what we can do to improve the quality of what we have.

Development Schedule

The next thing, is the development schedule and what kind of milestones we have in front of us. This may be changing over the next little while, but here is the plan for the time being:

• Phase 1: Prototyping [January 18, 2010]
• Phase 2: Database Implementation [March 1, 2010]
• Phase 3: Security Implementation [April 1, 2010]
• Phase 4: Administration Section Development [May 1, 2010]
• Phase 5: Public Site Development [June 1, 2010]
• Phase 6: Styling [July 1, 2010]
• Phase 7: Beta Launch [August 1, 2010]
• Phase 8: Go Live [September 1, 2010]

I realize that it seems like development is going to take quite a while. Keep in mind that this is a part time thing for me, and I will be learning from the ground up how to program in PHP. There are many pieces to this software that I will need to research and determine the best way to implement, but with time and effort we will build a new and improved ZVGQ.

With that, I believe that there is work to be done. It is time to kick the tires and light the fires and get this project under way. Add comments to the bottoms to provide some feedback or to ask any questions you may have.

Catch you on the flip side.

With the new year upon us I thought I would take a moment to discuss some of the plans for the upcoming year. Plus, it will be interesting to review this post a year from now to see what I had planned for 2010 and compare it to what I actually completed.

Enter 2010...

Project: ZVGQ.com

If you have been checking out the site in the later part of the year, you may have noticed that a project section appeared at the top. The main reason for this section is the fact that I have a project that I will be working on in the new year. If you want more details, check out the project page here.

Winnipeg .NET User Group

I have been part of the Winnipeg .NET User Group for a while, but playing primarily the role of an attendee. As of late, I have been given the opportunity to take a bigger role with the group by contributing to their events. So far there are a couple of items that have been brought to my attention, but so far nothing is completely solid nor has it been announced. As things develop, I will discuss them further via the blog.

In the meantime, you can learn more about the the group at their website here.

18 (or so) Original Posts + Updates

Last year I had a handful of original posts that actually stirred up some comments from people in the digital woods. Between the Expression Design discussion, Vancouver 2010 Virtual Waiting Room, and the review of Bing from a different perspective I managed to get some people reading and even commenting on my thoughts.

The problem was that I did not really have an idea of the amount of work that it was going to be to maintain the blog. For starters, spam became a serious problem thus responding to comments became exceptionally difficult. Plus, writing a decent post is not something that is simple. It requires some serious thought, and more importantly time.

This year I have a very good idea of the time I need to put into to keep the blog updated and get some digital lifeblood flowing through it. With that in mind, I figure it is possible for me to schedule time to post about one original post every three weeks or so, in combination with the quick updates about events and such.

Other Projects

On the projects page, you’ll notice that there are other projects that I have listed there. I always have ideas of work that I would like to do, but there is only so much time that I can dedicate to my personal projects. The most important thing I would like to see in 2010 is the actual completion of a project from Wesstyware. Considering that Wesstyware is just yours truly, it makes sense to focus my efforts on one thing at a time.

Still, you can probably expect to see other projects either appear or extend over the upcoming year. This stuff is fun for me, and it if it isn’t fun then why I am spending so much time on it?

Conclusion

This is what I predict for Wesstyware in the year 2010 as of December 31, 2009. We shall see how the year goes and meet back here in 365 days to see how I did.

Catch you on the flip side.

Hey all,

I needed to post a claim code on the new blog to register the new site with Technorati. I was just informed that the claim code was found and that they just need to review things.

In any case, I spent some time updating my profile on Technorati to better reflect me. Feel free to check it out (link to follow when claim is complete).

Catch you on the flip side.

Wednesday was the last day for the Tech Days 2009 tour hosted by Microsoft. This year, they decided to put on the full two day show for Winnipeg, and something was different this year. Something was better. That something better can be explained with the following formula.

Be warned that if you do not have some kind of training with formal mathematics, this may blow…your…mind.

The big difference about Tech Days this year was that the Wessty wasn’t just an attendee, but a presenter. I took part in two presentations over the course of the two days. The first day, I worked with Miguel Carrasco on the presentation entitled Expression Blend for Developers (with Miguel Carrasco). The second day, I presented Building RESTful Services in WCF on my own.

Expression Blend for Developers

As you may have noticed, the topics of my two presentations were very different. The first one was about my bread and butter, that being Expression Blend 3. Considering that I am something of a User Experience person, this topic was right up my alley. Miguel started off the presentation by introducing the software and explaining how it can be useful to developers.

My work in the presentation involved demonstrating how a developer can use Expression Blend in their work. I started out by demonstrating how to use SketchFlow with WPF and giving people a quick run down on its capabilities.This was followed up by implementing the front-end of the SketchFlow application using Blend and seeing how the new features in the software can help me build something that not only works, but looks good too.

I very much enjoy the Expression Suite of software. For more details, check out the Expression website.

Building RESTful Service with WCF

The second presentation discussed how developers can use WCF to implement RESTful services. At a glance, you might thing that a UX developer has no place presenting this topic, but that is where you would be wrong.

My roots are with .NET 3.0 and 3.5, which includes the project formerly known as Indigo (a.k.a. WCF). I have always loved WCF for its simplicity to get working and have a flexible communications layer in my application, without having to write any complex communications code. Unfortunately, this fantastic tool is only fantastic thanks to the tooling that has been provided with Microsoft. It sets up everything for the developer, without the dev actually knowing what is happening under the covers.

SOAP (which is the protocol used to send and receive messages in WCF) is quite complex, specifically with the protocol that must be followed on both the client and server to get it working. A service implemented with a RESTful architecture demonstrate a refreshingly easy way to implement a communications layer using nothing more regular web protocols.

For more information about this, check out the MSDN and get started.

Conclusion

This was a very enriching experience, and I would recommend anyone dealing with Microsoft technologies to considering coming out to the next one or checking out any of the other .NET development events happening in your area.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line on here or drop me an email.

Oh, and I will be posting some photos sooner than later. I just need to get them organized. Until then…

Catch you on the flip side.

Related Resources

Here are some other findings on the web that discuss Tech Days 2009. Check them out!

• D’Arcy Lussier Blog Post
• Canadian Developer Connection – Joey Devilla (a.k.a. Dude with the accordion)
• D’Arcy Lussier’s thoughts….

Friday was an exceptionally busy, but amazing day for me. The reason for this is because Anvil Digital is making me part of more software project, with the expectation that I will play the role of UX developer or expert, or whatever you want to call it.

In any case, that includes two software projects that have the infamous Microsoft Office Ribbon as part of the UI. After reviewing the applications at a high level, the first UX task was easy to identify: make sure the ribbon works like the ribbon should.

If you didn’t already know, Microsoft has made the ribbon available to developers to use with a royalty-free licence. The catch is that you need to make sure the ribbon in your application provides your users with the UX standard that Microsoft has set for the ribbon.

I have been doing research on this all day today and applying my knowledge to our applications. Either way, I thought I would share the resources that I have found to be the most valuable.

Ribbon Vocabulary

Breakdown of the Ribbon

You can find this image on the MSDN too, but I wanted to include it as a quick reference. When you are talking about the ribbon, you should probably know the vocabulary that describes it.

Resources

These resources discussed all the important points from either a UX person’s or a developer’s viewpoint. Considering that I am something of a hybrid (literally as Wessty’s Job Title = UX Developer), I used all of them. Take a look and have all of your ribbon questions answered.

Windows UX Interaction Guidelines: Ribbons – A very in-depth look at the user experience for ribbon controls. Very useful when trying to decide whether your application can make use of the ribbon control.

Ribbon Implementation Tutorial – This is the introduction to a series of posts that describe how to implement the MS Ribbon control in your WPF application.

Office UI Licence and FAQ – The ribbon is free to use, assuming you following their rules. If you are planning on using the ribbon, you should probably review these documents.

Windows Ribbon Framework – Introduced with Windows 7, the WRF is a way for developers to manage a ribbon within their application. The catch: only works on Vista SP2 and above. So, if you are supporting Windows XP like I do, then this might not be your best option.

Introduction to WRF – An introduction to the WRF on MSDN.

Related Resources

Okay, there is only one resource here but it is really interesting if you have the time to watch it. I strongly recommend taking a look at this if you want to know the “why?” behind Microsoft’s decision use the ribbon for Office.

The Story of the Ribbon – A history on how Microsoft created the ribbon UI. A good look into how UX development takes place.

Twitter

There aren’t any links here, but I did use Twitter as a resource. When assessing the value of a particular UX feature, I try and look at it from both sides. The first side, is the “how this makes things better” side, while the other is “how this makes things worse”.

After tweeting about diving into ribbon UX, I received a response that discussed why I shouldn’t be using it. For me, Twitter has acted as a reminder about the other side of the argument as my company already likes using it. It is good to be reminded that people have their reasons for not using it too.

Alright, that’s it. Time to apply my new found knowledge about the ribbon control.

Catch you on the flip side.

I posted the other day about how I was going to make do with what I have, and breathe some life back into my blog. I continued working on the blog to attempt to bring it up to snuff, when I thought to myself I should build it back up from scratch, assuming I can port it over. I found WordPress, got it working, ported over my previous posts (complete with comments) and here we are.

I thought I would take the time to go off and talk about some of the new features that are available through the new implementation of Digital Thoughts with WordPress.

Thank you BlogEngine...you served me well.

New Feature #1: Comments

I realize that v1 of Digital Thoughts had comments, but there were some definite issues with how the comments were working in the old version. I just wanted to

V1 Comments = 90% Spam. v2 = Spam Control

Yesterday, I went through all of the comments that were ported over from the original posts. Out of the 550 or so comments, just under 500 were spam or at least appeared to be spam. If you do the math, that means that about 90% of the comments were spam. I was unaware that Digital Thoughts was plagued with so many spam posts, but now that I know it is an issue, it has been addressed.

WordPress provides a plugin called Akismet, which is supposed to help catch spam comments. With that in place, I am hoping that I’ll be able to keep the comment sections on the posts and pages to users that are actual people.

New Comment Management Interface

I realize that this feature doesn’t exactly apply directly to you, but it definitely does have an effect on your user experience with Digital Thoughts.

WordPress provides a comment administrative console that makes sorting through new comments, responding to people, and filtering out spam easy. Meaning, when you comment on a blog post, it will be much easier for me to find your new comment and respond to you! In conclusion, we now have some working two way comment communication, which is the whole reason why I started this blog in the first place.

Blog Comments RSS Feed

I am a big fan of RSS feeds, and subscribe to many. WordPress provides me with an RSS feed for the comments on the blog so that I can be notified about your thoughts on my posts ASAP as soon as Google Reader tells me you have commented.

New Feature #2: Categories

I know that BlogEngine.NET provided categories as well. The thing is, if the author doesn’t take the time to use them, then what good are they? No good, that’s how good.

With the new blog in place, I spent time sorting the old posts into a series of categories that I think organize things well. I know this isn’t a big step, but I’m hoping that it helps people navigate through the site and find things that they find interesting.

New Feature #3: New Style

With an updated site comes an updated style that I think better suits me. It’s simple, it’s clean, it works. That isn’t saying the old style didn’t work. People actually told me that the Digital Thoughts style from the BlogEngine version worked well.

The thing is, the style of the old blog never really felt like me. Sure, the ideas were mine and the content felt like me, but the look never did. Since I was updating the blog anyway, why not update something that I wanted to change? And so, here we are basking in the new style of Digital Thoughts.

Reason for the Switch

For record, I enjoyed working with BlogEngine.NET and it served me well. Sure, it didn’t have all the bells and whistles that WordPress has, but it also didn’t have a huge team of developers constantly working on it, nor has it had the chance to spill over to version 2. The latest build of BlogEngine.NET is v1.5, while WordPress is 2.8.5, on their way to 2.9.

Plus, considering that my development skills have been refined using almost nothing but .NET technologies and tools, it makes sense for me to have a .NET based blog. The problem was that BlogEngine required a bit of extra effort to get things working how I wanted them to work, and I didn’t have the time to put into the code.

WordPress has a much larger following, and ultimately has more options and tools at my disposal. With those tools, I’m able to manage my blog much easier than I could with BlogEngine.NET and so the switch was made.

Conclusion

There you have it. You now have a brief summary of the changes and you can expect with my new blog. Hopefully your future experiences with Digital Thoughts are improved over version one. I am eager to read and respond to your comments.

Catch you on the flip side.

I’ll be honest; this isn’t the big announcement I was intending to release a few weeks ago. The tides have changed with respect to my professional life. I figure I would take some time and explain my new situation.

New Job = User Experience Developer

As of about three weeks ago, ANVIL Digital decided to give me the opportunity to focus my efforts on my real passion in Computer Science: the user experience. The new job is very exciting and has involved a lot of work on my part to get UX data and results for our software in the short term, while defining new development processes that involve more UX input.  It’s a lot of work, but I am truly enjoying myself. It’s not everyday that you get assigned solely to the work you love.

On top of that, I have been getting much more involved with the Winnipeg .NET community through the user groups. Not only have I been working with D’Arcy Lussier on the new Silverlight User Group, but I have starting to get involved with the Winnipeg .NET User Group as well. I hope to be taking a role with them in the upcoming months. I will be sure to keep you all posted.

Same Wessty

Although the winds of change have swept the lands of Wesstyware, I am still the same Wessty that you all know and love. The difference is that I will be reprioritizing my personal projects a bit and probably be discussing UX a little more often on my blog.

With that in mind, my plan is to breathe some life back into this blog and update the content. As opposed to publishing a substandard web site, I figure I will coast along with what I have until I have the proper time to develop what I have in mind. Although, just because I’m making do with what I have doesn’t mean that things aren’t going to get better.

Blog Updates

Over the next few weeks, I will be making some organizational changes to the blog. To be more specific, I am going to be cleaning up the categories for the posts, adding some pages, and limiting the comments on my posts to about 30 days. I am continuing to get great comments from people and I appreciate them, but I am finding it difficult keeping up with responding to people, especially on the older posts.

Realize that enjoy the comments and all the feedback and I hope that people keep them up with the new date cap on how long people can comment on my posts. Still, keep commenting on upcoming posts. If you want to comment on older posts drop me a line through the contact page or add me to Twitter (@Wessty) and send me a message. I’m pretty active in the “Twitterverse”, and would be happy to hear from everyone.

As I grow more comfortable in my new shoes at ANVIL, I hope to find the time to continue my work and discuss here soon. In the meantime though…

Catch you on the flip side.

Mark your calendar everyone, because tonight marked the first meeting of the Winnipeg Silverlight User Group, and I must say that the night was an evening to remember. The group was started by D’Arcy Lussier, a well known member of the .NET community.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere for the evening is shat made the event different than others I have attended in the past. The plan wasn’t to have formal presentations followed by Q & A, but to have discussions led by real Silverlight developers followed up by conversations between the attendees. Tonight there were two discussions, the first lead by me and the second by D’Arcy.

Discussions

My discussion revolved around the work I have been doing with SketchFlow with a project I plan on formally announcing on my blog and website in the upcoming week. To give you a brief summary on what I spoke about, it concerns how I use the different features of SketchFlow to gather requirements, prototype, and receive feedback from stakeholders for ASP.NET 3.5 and jQuery web applications. (Thing to note: I don’t use Silverlight in my work projects).

D’Arcy picked up the group after me showing us how Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was supporting Silverlight 3, including the brand new designer component for Silverlight (which was unavailable up until now). This also lead into a conversation with Dylan Smith about RIA Services and what they can do for Silverlight applications.

Conclusion

All in all, it was a fantastic evening with great conversations about conferences, technology, and all sorts of fun. I strongly suggest that more people come to the next meeting whether you are a Silverlight pro or you just know a bit about it. These meetings are your chance to take part in conversations and ask your questions one-on-one with real Silverlight people.

For more information, watch the user group websiteor drop me (david dot wesst at wesstyware.com) or D’Arcy a line and we’ll be sure to send you some info.

Catch you on the flip side.

SIDE NOTE: I realize that I haven’t posted in a long time, but I have been working on some new things and I assure you that some interesting content is coming your way in the next couple of weeks.

Stay tuned! It will be worth it, I promise!