What a ride this has been! This is what I and other more than 30 people from different companies have been working on together for the last 6 months: .toolbox.

A bit more than a week away from when we went live we already have around 2,500 students from 80+ countries around the world!

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.toolbox is an online design training program where you will find two study tracks: Design Principles and Design Scenarios.  You can take the training, present evaluations, collect badges and share your status via Twitter and Facebook. Do you have what it takes to get the ultimate Design All-Star badge?!

Design Principles is all about learning how to do better UX and design in general. We have received HUGE number of requests for this type of content. You will find 12 modules on this track, each about an hour long so 12 good hours of UX lectures

Design Scenarios is all about learning how to use Expression Blend and the design aspects of Silverlight. We have 12 modules, each about an hour long. The evaluations will only cover what is on the video but in addition we’ve included assets and a guide where you can follow a hands on lab. Some of the mini apps we have in the school are: SketchFlow Prototyping, Music Mixer, Canvas, Games, Business, Avatar Creator, Weather and more…

Since we first released Expression Studio 1 and Silverlight 1 the need train developers and designers in the use of this new platform has been huge. Everyone knows how to use Flash or Photoshop but no one knew how to use Expression Blend. All this time Microsoft has been growing investment on Silverlight resources and building better websites with learning materials. These days passionate community members also drive amazing blogs where they share tips and tricks to use Expression Blend.

For a couple years I drove a program called Artist in Residence which invited designers to Microsoft to work with developers to learn Silverlight and Blend. I also did the internal Artist in Residence where dozens of Microsoft teams, from XBOX to Office, to Bing to MSN got trained in the use of Silverlight and Blend.

After all these interactions I realized we were reaching maturity level in the business where we needed to go broader and reach many more people. Even though having designers visiting us in the campus was unbelievably fun and one of the most memorable experience of working for Microsoft, you can only reach so many people that way. An online design training program was a better solution moving forward and so we came up with the idea of creating the .toolbox.

The .toolbox is a website that trains developers and designers, evaluates knowledge, awards badges for achievements and that then shares your status via Twitter or Facebook. We hired multiple companies to help us build this site: Avlade produced all the Design Scenarios modules. Archetype many of the mini apps you will build in the school. Fuel Industries created the whole website and also a couple of the mini apps. Template Monster provided 3 beautiful sample templates from their library. Internal Microsoft UX designers contributed to the creation of the Design Principles modules.

If you have any questions/comments about .toolbox drop me a comment here and if you run into issues while taking the training please post directly to the Expression Blend forum. Remember to label your questions with TOOLBOX and then you question.

The concept of creating vision videos to sell an idea has been around since there has been cameras and specially TVs. Just like today Microsoft publishes a Health future vision video, 50 years ago people were also pitching the “Hospital of the Future” or movies and documentaries were displaying how life would be like with future technology.

Portraying the future has always been a passion for humans. The “What comes next?” question drives many people of many backgrounds, from painters, designers, developers, engineers, politicians, stock brokers and of course gamblers. Video as a medium to communicate messages is very effective because it is so rich. Video offers moving images and sound that communicate ideas in a more tangible, digestible manner to people. Video does a better job in tricking people to think that what they are watching is “real” - “If I see it, hear it and makes sense then it should be real”… and if not real at least it is more “credible”.

So the question is why would only big corporations produce vision videos? The answer is NO!, everyone, all of us who are part of the IT industry, the Web… the UX and Design world… we should all see ourselves at the beginning of a new project for a client as a James Cameron or a George Lucas. Vision videos are for everyone. Vision videos do not have to be always thinking 50 years ahead… make vision videos 1 year head… 6 months ahead… 6 weeks ahead. Help your client visualize the future. There is  “magic” when someone (like you) are able to show your client where they will be in 6 months (after they hire YOU to design and develop their new website, business application, or mobile experience)… and yes, here comes the marketing pitch! Use SketchFlow! whoa! - did I just trick you into reading this whole blog post to finish with getting SketchFlow? if you are reading this, chances are I succeeded but no, seriously, there are many tools designers use to visualize the future… Adobe After Effects is a great tool to produce videos with effects and a lot of agencies use it. It is not a prototyping tool per se but people use it for visualization. I call it “the Photoshop of video”. Mastering AfterEffects is not easy though. Also lot of people use Powerpoint! yes, slides with animations to communicate how the final application or website will look like - the vision of the future… well, I think you will also find that Expression Blend and SketchFlow can help you create these future visions.  You can create animation easily and integrate images or graphics from Photoshop or Illustrator. You can integrate video and even simulate how your client’s experience will behave “in the future” by making this Silverlight-based vision interactive. Prototyping is about helping you visualize where you are going to and discover issues and opportunities before hand. The same principle of the power of video applies: the richer the medium is to communicate your message - like a future vision interactive prototype - the more engaging and charismatic your ideas will be for your client.

• Future vision videos and prototypes get people excited!
• You determine the timespan of your “vision” (e.g 50 years, 10 years, 1 year, 6 months or 6 weeks)
• Use different media to share your vision to your client. They will love it.

For example, check out this terrific vision of the future video that with INCREDIBLE detail described how life would be in the year 2000.

Thanks to everyone who filled out our Design Tools and Techniques Workshop for MIX10. Here are the results. I wanted to share with you as they show interesting trends on what people are interested in learning more related to Silverlight and Blend. The survey focused on the design/UX aspects of Silverlight. Note these numbers do not represent “coolness” levels per topic rather, they simply show what people are more interested in learning about. Here is an image of the full survey with the topics…

I hope this list helps book publishers, Silverlight community rockstars, training companies and us here in Microsoft to produce more content on the top rated topics. What do you think about this? Any other topics we could have included in the survey?

The Rating number shows the sum of points per topic. People rated topics with 1, 0, -1 (Like +, Like, Not Like). The Points number shows the positive sum of votes per topics 2, 1, 0 (Like +, Like, Not Like). Basically the first number, Rating dramatizes the different between love and hate per topic. 

In this small survey you will find the different topics that Archetype, Adam Kinney and I will be covering during the workshop. We have 3 areas we want to cover: 1) Design Concept 2) Interactive Design 3) UI Development.

Design Concept are activities you perform while capturing the needs of your customers and putting together that early concept that you can then sell to your client, get their approval and get started. This early concept needs to look great and communicate the UX vision you have for the client.

Interactive Design is about creating compelling, rich and engaging UIs. Learning more about Animation, Effects, Transitions and Controls in Expression Blend.

UI Development is about learning coding techniques to bring up your UIs to the next level in terms of interactivity and richness. From creating your own Behaviors, Controls, Layout panels to Pixels Shaders and exposing all these in a Expression Blend friendly manner for designers.

In this small survey you will find the different topics that Archetype, Adam Kinney and I will be covering during the workshop. We have 3 areas we want to cover at the MIX10 Design Tools and Techniques Workshop: 1) Design Concept 2) Interactive Design 3) UI Development.

Design Concept are activities you perform while capturing the needs of your customers and putting together that early concept that you can then sell to your client, get their approval and get started. This early concept needs to look great and communicate the UX vision you have for the client.

Interactive Design is about creating compelling, rich and engaging UIs. Learning more about Animation, Effects, Transitions and Controls in Expression Blend.

UI Development is about learning coding techniques to bring up your UIs to the next level in terms of interactivity and richness. From creating your own Behaviors, Controls, Layout panels to Pixels Shaders and exposing all these in a Expression Blend friendly manner for designers

Fill the survey… 

Leave me a comment if you are have more comments or ideas. Archetype is a tremendous agency who have done amazing work with Silverlight and Flash. They will be sharing with us real world tips and tricks on stage. The format of the workshop is not exactly a lab but we’ll assets you can use to follow along.

As part of the CRE8 Conference last week in Miami, August de los Reyes and I presented a collection of the cool videos, websites and customer stories. Here is a great list for you with the best of best in Silverlight and UX.

Should I add any other cool website, video or customer story about Silverlight and Microsoft UX? Leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to add to the list.

August de los Reyes, Director of UX for Surface and I just came back from cold Miami… yes cold! I had to use a sweater all the time - It was sunny though and beautiful. My first time in Miami. I can’t believe the color of the ocean there - it’s all emerald. I’m looking forward to going back sometime in the future, in summer with more time to go to the beach.

One thing that wasn’t cold at all was the warm reception we got from our partners at AGI Training and GOA. We had a great time with everyone during the event. Thank you to all attendees who where there during the event.

Continue reading the full article with 25 Inspiring Silverlight Websites, Videos and Customer Stories here…

August and I had the opportunity to participate in the CRE8 Conference and deliver the keynote. I belive the keynote was recorded but I wanted to share with you all the links of demos we showed during the keynote. I think you will find this list handy as a guide of what is possible with Silverlight. Most of these real websites are built with Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3. Now that Silverlight 4 and Expression Studio 4 are getting closer the kinds of things you will be able to create are even cooler - remember that with Silverlight we now get Microphone and Webcam support, better and easier business application features among many other features. For Expression Blend 4 we are still not sharing some of the good and upcoming news but it will definitely be the most exciting release ever.

We’ll talk more about this at MIX in Las Vegas.

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