by Larry Richman
January 6, 2007 9:05 PM

Windows Vista RTM Lab Session 4 --

Readers who have followed our previous Longhorn and Vista Lab coverage know how much fun we have had with Tjeerd Hoek, Director of User Experience Design for Windows. This is a fancy name for "the UI Guy," who basically designed the look of Vista: buttons, bars, windows, icons, etc. In other words, the elements that most users of Vista think is what makes Vista different from XP -- the look.

It must be said that in previous sessions, all of Tjeerd's presentations have been heavy on NDA material, i.e. confidential. We saw the genesis of certain images, some of which were thrown out along the way, some of which were being considered at the time, and some of which are still in the planning stages at the time. For the most part, the changes that you've seen in successive builds of Vista (icons, for example) were elements for which he was responsible, and they now exist in the Windows Vista which the public will see at the end of the month.

First we had a chance to see the process which went into designing various UI elements.

They chose to have horizontal consistency across different types of features/applications. This is why Windows Media Player, Pictures, and Movie Maker have a black skin while Explorer windows have a blue skin. Another idea was to use familiar web ideas, like the back button, within Explorer windows and in wizards.

Then we launched into the main part of the presentation, which was the history of the development of the new start button, which also serves as the symbol for Windows Vista all over the world.

We saw over a thousand designs of start buttons. All sorts of shapes, colors, hovers, glows, green flames shooting out, etc. It's pretty amazing when you see how much work went into that one specific element.