Life after Death - The WMC UI Returns

[softworkz]

In case some folks from the original team are monitoring this repo - your creation is not entirely dead!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykfq9ILPsyM

[retrosight]

Yup, I'm here -- very cool and thanks for sharing. ;-)

[softworkz]

Hi,

is there by chance any graphics material resting around which hadn't been shipped?

In some cases, I had to get creative to fill the gaps, like this toggle button build from a radio element

It was needed, but it's like with classic cars: when you use parts which aren't original, it reduces the value ;-)

[retrosight]

You would not have seen toggles in the Windows Media Center UX as it leveraged checkboxes rather than a toggle to represent binary (on or off) concepts.

[retrosight]

The design concept you've come up with sure does look like it would fit in with the overall design, though, doesn't it. ;-)

[softworkz]

I know. These toggles are not used in the main UI. They were needed for the settings area of Emby.

like it would fit in with the overall design, though, doesn't it. ;-)

I tried at least :-)

This was the starting point, three years ago, I did it just for fun and that was it at that time:

https://softworkz.github.io/hlstestfiles/wmcbg/background_animation.html

https://softworkz.github.io/hlstestfiles/wmcbg/background_animation_hinted.html

[retrosight]

I do recall several design concepts which followed a more skeuomorphic approach and generally speaking we would ask ourselves: Can this be simpler? Which would naturally lead away from skeuomorphism.

Quite a faithful reproduction you have there with straight up HTML...!

[softworkz]

12 months ago, I thought I could try to do the button:

And then it started..

[softworkz]

Quite a faithful reproduction you have there with straight up HTML...!

I translated all the MCML animations and positions by hand... For everything everyhwere ;-)

[softworkz]

There was one additional element for this button: some glass glow effect. Do you remember why it was deactivated?

[retrosight]

Well done. The Windows Media Center graphics engine had its start circa 1999 (24 years ago!) and the HTML + CSS + Javascript landscape and renderers could not even begin to come close to the fidelity we wanted at that time which needed a 3D gaming engine behind the scenes for the animations.

Over time, the animations came to be more subtle and elegant, so the design morphed from that glass glow effect to a simpler reflection on the frame tile. There was definitely a desire to let the content within Windows Media Center be front and center rather than the UX.

[softworkz]

I don't want to flood you with questions, but here's one which I'm most curious about:

I think one of the greatest achievements of WMC UX is the optimized flow of operation. This goes through every single view and everywhere to the very last detail. There is absolutely nowhere even a single case where a RC button tap could have been avoided. That effectiveness is still unparalleled. Even the most modern UX designs (I mean operational) are far away from it and I wonder why so many UX designers don't realize how suboptimal their designs are.

How did it come to that and who drove this? Sometimes I think you must have been sitting there and counting how many button tabs are needed to do this or that or get here from there etc. The start menu for example reflects that as well. Having that 2d navigation requires the minimum amount of button taps to reach every item in average.

There must have been someone who has driven those optimizations to the extreme - that's my imagination at least...

[retrosight]

I believe that was just part of our design ethos and we all had our weekly 'take home' DVDs where we subjected ourselves (and our families) to the product build over the weekend and throughout the work week until the next Friday and we 'ate our own dogfood' (a common Microsoft phrase at the time) and provided feedback. And when I say 'all of us' I mean it was a very passionate team who absolutely loved what we were building.

Leading the charge with making the product better and better (including the number of hops for the end user to reach any feature) was Joe Belfiore (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-belfiore-microsoft/) whose feedback from any given build of Windows Media Center was legendary -- every week we would get literal pages of his feedback about what he liked, what he thought should be improved.

A designer I worked with a lot was Will Vong (https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-vong/) and he always had the entirety of the user experience in his head, and really pushed the envelope in that it not only had to look great but it also had to work great and, most importantly, feel great.

We also had a LOT of usability tests and I remember participating in those with Sheri Panabaker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheri-panabaker/) -- our usability team worked tirelessly to get our product in front of broad spectrum of real world users (read: NOT Microsoft employees), give them the remote and let them navigate and give us feedback.

That is just three of hundreds of very talented people. Maybe I just need to put a list of eHome team members together. ;-)

[softworkz]

Thanks for sharing the details. I can only say that this effort, the team and the achievement was legendary, unprecedented and yet unparalleled! Now, more than a decade later, I see myself sitting in front of the latest "smart tv" models, which frequently loose your watching position and when you want to resume where you left off, you need to move the seek point by holding down a button on the remote for 30 or 60 seconds while the position is slowly moving forward and your finger starts hurting ;-)

Is it still a secret why MS has dropped it? Was it low usage figures (cannot believe), codec license fees, lack of support from the broadcast industry, lack of love from the management or something else?

That is just three of hundreds of very talented people. Maybe I just need to put a list of eHome team members together. ;-)

It would be justified, because it's been an exceptional work.

Every second feedback we get on the replica is specifically mentioning that wife and kids are loving it, and thinking back to where we had WMC on all TVs, I realize that it's been the only software that I never needed to explain.