The talk delivered by Microsoft really impressed me a lot. I was once thinking those cutting edge technology is still very far away from me. And i still have a long way to go to catch up with Microsoft etc. Realistically speaking , the gap is still there. But it is seemingly not as much as what i thought. If we really spend the time and work on cool stuff like kinect programming, well, it is doable. =). But i have no idea how long it will take me the actually know it well instead of merely trying to use the example desperately like what i did. Backbone.js example etc.
I have to admit that anything cool for geeks only may not be interesting to others. Example? Linux system? Some cool algorithm? My point here is that if kinect were a huge success, the design and outlook of kinect has contributed 20% or more. And most importantly, the marketing of kinect has done more than 30%. Once people were given a choice of two options: A very good product with normal UI and normal marketing people Or a normal product with fantastic marketing strategy and cool UI. Well, in the short run, most boss tend to favor the second to the first. It is a world of normal beings, not geeks. So, marketing strategy is always sort of as significant as technology.
From my perspective of the current working world, technology remains the core competency of any enterprise. That is what we programmer aimed to be part of for the next fives years or so. However, production and distribution depend largely on marketing. That is where the business people come into the picture. =)
You are absolutely correct. When I was younger I used to think in terms of power and flexibility, and how products with minimal UI are fine and that people should just get off their lazy asses and adapt to a command line environment.
ReplyDeleteMy view is very different today; UI/UX is everything, even for the power-users. Why? Simply because with good UI/UX one can get things done so much faster and get so much more stuff done. Command-line has its place (it's heck of a lot faster if you're proficient with the commands), but for mass acceptance, UI/UX is king.
But of course kings are useless without their soldiers, so that's where stuff like the underlying technologies come in. :p