Designing tools you’ll use

Personal upfront investment vs. usage in Hotmail

We spend a lot of time studying how people manage their email. We know that people use a variety of tools to find messages, file messages, and navigate through all their mail. But some tools are used more commonly than others.

Of course, every tool has a certain learning curve that each person needs to go through to understand how it works. Some tools are simple, and might even feel as though you’ve used them a thousand times before (like sorting), and some tools are pretty complex to understand and configure (like rules, or custom keyboard shortcuts).

We’ve found that tools that require more time and effort to learn upfront tend to get used by fewer people. A tool that only a few people adopt might still be super handy for some folks – not to mention creative, clever, and cool. It’s just that there’s a converse correlation over time between the personal upfront time investment required to use any particular inbox management mechanism and the prevalence of its usage.

Source: Internal Microsoft data

We tend to geek out on technology here at the Mountain View, CA, facility where we build and manage Windows Live Hotmail. But as much as we like using ourselves as our own little focus group, we know that not everyone has the time or interest to invest in tinkering with complex features—no matter how handy or creative we think they are. Many people – maybe even most people – just want to get in and out of their email quickly and get done what they need to do.

That’s why minimizing the upfront personal investment for our customers is one of the central engineering principles guiding our current work on Hotmail. Our goal is to make any new tool as discoverable as possible, as intuitive as possible, and as efficient as possible. We don’t always nail it right out of the gate for every new feature, but we try – and we iterate based on the feedback we get from you until we’ve gotten the job done.

Dick Craddock
Group Program Manager
Windows Live Hotmail

Forrester: Windows 7 Early Adopters Were Satisfied Upgraders

Yesterday, Forrester’s JP Gownder published a blog post highlighting some data from two new reports on Windows 7 adoption and satisfaction. The reports show that by the end of 2009, a strong majority of US consumers were aware of Windows 7. Windows 7 hit the market at the end of October so it’s pretty great to see that within just 2 months after launch a large portion of US consumers knew about Windows 7. Forrester also found that consumers who adopted Windows 7 in Q4 were generally very satisfied with their Windows 7 PCs.

And finally, another interesting finding was around upgrades. People move to a new OS one of two ways: either by buying a new PC or upgrading an existing PC. In the past, most people simply purchased a new PC to get a new version of Windows. With Windows 7, the data in the reports show that upgrading existing PCs was a much stronger trend with Windows 7. In the end, the reports show that early adopters who upgraded to Windows 7 were quite satisfied. Exciting to see the progress!

Presto Transfer Opera

03/31/10 - Automate the transferral of your Opera mail, address book and settings from one computer to another.

EZ Backup IE and Windows Mail Basic

03/31/10 - Backup favorites, mail and address book.

EZ Backup IE and Outlook Express Pro

03/31/10 - Backup favorites, mail and address book.

Are you a piler, filer, or purger?

When we looked into how people used email, we found some interesting patterns. It turns out that there are generally three types of people when it comes to email: pilers, filers, and purgers.

Which are you?

• Piler: “I generally don’t put email into a folder or archive. I don’t delete it. I just let it pile up in my inbox."
• Filer: “I generally categorize messages by moving them into folders I’ve created or assigning labels to each message.”
• Purger:  “I generally delete email after I’ve read it.”

Different strokes for different folks. It’s a fun engineering challenge to build an email service that works well for all three types of folks.

Here’s a bit of data on how pilers, filers, and purgers tend to manage the email in their accounts.

Source: Microsoft internal

And a chart that will give you a sense as to what percentage of people are like you.

Coming up next – did you know that Hotmail has keyboard shortcuts? Did you know that you can choose between Outlook shortcuts and Gmail-compatible shortcuts? Pretty geeky, huh? I’ll talk next about how we think about those features that we geeks love and that most people never use.

Dick Craddock
Group Program Manager, Windows Live Hotmail

The Windows Enterprise 90 Day Trial Has Been Extended

Due to popular demand, the Windows Enterprise Trial program has been extended. This means you now have till Dec 31st, 2010 to download and evaluate the trial version.

The Enterprise trial is designed specifically for IT Professionals, so that you can test your software and hardware on a final version of the product. In addition, it provides the opportunity for you to become more familiar with the key improvements over previous versions of the Windows operating system, and experience firsthand how Windows 7 can make your PC environment more productive, secure, and manageable.

Since the trial software designed for IT Professionals interested in experiencing the Windows 7 Enterprise on behalf of their organization. We do not recommend that you install this if you are a not an IT Professional or not professionally managing corporate networks.

A few thing to be aware before you install the trial.

• You have 10 days to activate the product. If not activated within 10 days, the system will shut down once every hour until activated. Unsure on how to activate? Visit our FAQ.
• The 90-day Trial is the full working version of the Windows 7 Enterprise, the version most of you will be working with in your corporate environment. It will not require a product key (it is embedded with the download).
• The 90-day Trial will shut down once every hour when you have reached the end of the 90-day evaluation period.
• After the 90-day Trial expires, if you wish to continue to use Windows 7 Enterprise, please note that you will be required to purchase and perform a clean installation of Windows 7, including drivers and applications. Please keep this in mind; Windows 7 Enterprise is not available through retail channels.
• Technical details/updates/questions: Please review our FAQ or visit the Windows 7 support forum.

To learn more or get the download, please visit the Springboard Series on TechNet.

Slicksync Skype Synchronizer Pro

03/30/10 - Automate the synchronization of your Skype Contacts and Settings.

Slicksync Skype Synchronizer Pro

03/30/10 - Automate the synchronization of your Skype Contacts and Settings.

Slicksync PowerPoint Synchronizer Pro

03/30/10 - Automate the synchronization of your PowerPoint Presentations.

Next Page »