Microsoft at my house

Posted on September 20, 2005 3 Comments

Saturday was an interesting day. Started like any other recent saturday: me heading in to the office. Only worked 4 hours or so, then zipped back into town to catch the daughter’s 2nd soccer game of the season. They managed to win it (2-0!). Was quite hot, the wife and I picked up some red skin before we ran for cover and watched the final half from under the nearby picnic shelters. Alas, after being inspired by Hans’s photos of last week I had hoped to try my hand at sport photography, but we forgot the camera at home…

Got home from that and futzed around a bit with the mini-T. Then we had a visitor. From Microsoft of all places. Now, to be honest, it had been set up a few weeks previous. I wasn’t sure if there was an NDA involved or not so I hadn’t mentioned it up until now. No NDA, but really not much to spill either. But it was interesting.

So it all started a few weeks ago. I got a call one evening from a “Tyra” who is a “Usability Coordinator.” Were we interested in visiting with a usability engineer who’d be in our area soon? I figure they got my name from back when I was doing Solo Technology full time. I attended several MS seminars and such in the area (security stuff for the most part). Anyway, back on topic: Well ok, I’m game. Wife’s not so excited, but she goes along with it.

The guy shows up (late, but he called to warn us) and gives a bit of an explanation of what’s going on. MS is looking at a new product or niche and is talking with family types to see what they think and get ideas. Basically, they’re looking at some sort of family management system. (pity I forget the actual name he used…). The main gist of it seems to be centered around a multi-user calendar (omg finally!) that the whole family uses. It would potentially help keep track of dependencies and schedules, such that if one person changes a calender item that other people were associated with, they all get notified. Ok, nice start and definitely has my attention. Then there’s the potential of other “snap-ins” for various features. Bill paying. Grocery list tracking. Budgeting. etc. etc. etc.

I thought the whole thing was done when he asked if he could video tape our meeting. Wife was “No Way” going along with that one. Fortunately, he conceeded it wasn’t mandatory and got busy taking notes of our discussions. phew.

Now at the beginning we don’t really know exactly what it is that MS wants to build. Instead, the engineer just lays out a 30k foot view of some “stuff” that they’re looking at. We picked up the rest as the meeting went on. First he hands us a stack of 75 tasks. We’re to look at each task and put it in one of two piles: stuff I want vs. stuff that’s not so important to me. All sorts of tasks. Some “hard” tasks like “Tell me where I need to be when”, “organize my family’s schedules” and some “soft” tasks like “build my self esteem” and “help my kids be more independent.”. Ok, easy enough. Then, we need to pick our top 5 out of each category and do a little 4 or 5 question survey for each.

Along the way, we learn that the wife and I are looking for completely different things from a package like this! Lol, no real surprise but we had a touching moment when she realized that I’m often completely in the dark and trying to keep up with the kids’ schedules. And usually confused. It was a bit of a hallmark moment. Meanwhile, as we talk over some of our respective needs for this software, the engineer takes tons of notes and is carefully non-commital (as he should be at this stage of the game). He did a good job and basically was doing pure “Requirements Gathering”. I now know what it feels like to have attended the RSS (requirements scoping session) meetings I used to lead at Amex.

All in all, quite interesting and if they do it right I can’t wait to see this software! Oh, and while we didn’t get paid, per se, we each get to order any software package from the MS consumer line. Not a bad little perk.