Bill Buxton at Microsoft Research

Bill Buxton, who was a former CS professor at the University of Toronto, famous for his ubiquitous computing and user interface research and his work at Alias (an inspiration to all Canadian HCI researchers, with another mention being Ron Baecker), is now working at Microsoft Research according to this article from IT Business Canada. Thanks to KMDI for posting this in their newsletter which I just read tonight!

Interesting that Bill Buxton wrote to Rick Rashid of Microsoft Research that he wanted to work there, he didn't even apply, just asked Rick that he wanted to do something at Microsoft Research and said let's make it happen. And it did. So what's Bill working on at Microsoft? Apparently, not much yet, he wants to learn the culture at Microsoft. In fact, he feels that Microsoft can be a better company by leveraging on the existing assets and talent in the company, rather than getting new people. He points to Microsoft's competitor Apple, whom he admires, and how they turned their business around, by focussing on their existing talent and not really creating anything new, but rather, a new cultural shift and perspective. Which brought the iPod and iMac, and now Apple, is as popular and successful as ever (now Apple has the MacBook Pro and the Intel-based Macs).

Bill also talks about having a chief design officer, how design should be a separate discipline, and how design is so important in the product development cycle, but is often done poorly or ignored. Which leads to frustrating user interfaces, poor products, lots of customer complaints, upgrades of products, and projects that become way over budget and over time. Bill is also a very outdoors person and like to go ice-climbing. In fact, he gets many of his design inspirations from nature. So, maybe that's what perhaps Computer Science needs to be, not just straight programming and technical, but also add the creativity, artistic and design flavours. In fact, isn't this what ubiquitous computing should be, an aura of it works but it's pleasant and it's useful?

Also in the KMDI newsletter, there is a blurb about Blogs Canada (a web site directory of Canadian blogs), and free wireless access in Toronto and where from Wireless Toronto.