Great Canadian User Experiences From MIX09

I was on the road when we held our local MIX09 media event for media on March 17th, so I couldn’t be there. But the good news is that we captured all the highlights on video.

Video: Great examples of Canadian UX in action

Don’t have time to watch? Here’s the 30-second version:

  • We had CTV on hand to announce its CTV HD Beta Player, which streams primetime TV in HD online – a Canadian first - delivered via Silverlight.
  • Innovapost showed off an impressive touch screen POS app currently being rolled out to thousands of Canada Post retail employees across Canada. It takes advantage of Windows Presentation Foundation and Expression Blend, and has been nominated for an Ignite IT award.
  • Finally there was Workopolis with an app that I think pretty much everyone in Canada who ever looked for a job has seen. Great Microsoft platform story, which now includes an IE8 Web Slice that instantly updates personalized job postings on the browser.

The past 12 months has been a real coming out period Software + Services vision and demos like these show where the rubber really hits the road. 

At MIX09 Scott Guthrie, Bill Buxton and others showed just how important the user experience is in delivering both software and online services.  This couldn’t be more important. Today the desktop and online experience is the customer experience. That means it’s developers and designers who are now on the front lines of driving real business results.

This opens up a whole new world of possibilities, some of which we saw at MIX09. But it’s just the beginning – stay tuned.

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