Musical designers: UI guru moves from Apple to Microsoft to RIM
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Apr 9th 2009 3:59PM
posted Apr 9th 2009 3:59PM
For all its flaws, we can understand why someone who can say they had anything to do with designing the iPhone's user experience would be a hot commodity among manufacturers and platform firms, but RIM? mocoNews is reporting that Don Lindsay, who spent the last five years at Microsoft working in the Live Labs and Vista teams, has made the jump to Waterloo to lead up the user experience team. Prior to Microsoft, he lead the OS X user experience group, which the Ottawa Citizen reports created the user experience for the iPhone; that's all well and good, but how much influence could he really have had in the mobile space if he left Cupertino way back in 2004? Either way, perhaps the most interesting thing about the hire is that RIM just underwent a major renovation of its brand image around the time of the Bold and Storm releases -- and BlackBerry users tend to love the way their devices generally operate (Storm notably excepted), so any jarring change to the experience risks alienating huge swaths of the base. Then again, RIM has made no secret of its aspirations to push ever deeper into the consumer space -- a place where Apple shines -- and again, RIM's touch paradigm needs some serious tweaking, so maybe this guy is going to leave the Bolds and Niagaras of the world to the pros and attack the multimedia-hungry masses with an entirely different angle.
or maybe he's gonna come up with a sweetass touchscreen phone with the beautiful bb keyboard we all want?
As much as Windows Mobile 6.x has its interface issues, WM 7 definitely looks like it's on the up and up. I'd say that RIM is most badly in need of an interface redesign.
WinMo can at least be skinned easily by the user using SPB Mobile Shell and the large selection produced by the users on the XDA Forums.
This guy gets around. He wins really. Getting to work with all these great companies will benefit him more than anyone.
Especially considering that the "OS X user experience group" publicly expressed bafflement when confronted about UI flaws that have dogged the Mac OS embarrassingly for years, even after those flaws were documented in major IT publications. Example 1: The inability to resize windows from their edges.
Perhaps he is one of those guys who hops from company to company who claims to have done more than he really has, and who moves on before he really has to deliver anything. This industry is FULL of them,
That's exactly what this guy is, just another HI guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time and is taking credit for things even remotely associated with them. And not even necessarily the right time. He left Cupertino FIVE years ago. Five years ago, iPods were still black and white. Non news.
Yeah, he can't really be that good if he's been moving from company from company. Wouldn't Apple or Microsoft raise his pay if they really wanted him to stay? Seeing as Microsoft's Vista hasn't really been received well during his stay at Microsoft, I conclude that this guy is one of those 'floaters'.
yup, right on.
Id love to know what this guys wage for one day of work would be.... I dont know if itd be surprisingly low or high.....
Wow it's tom leykis, the professor.
Microsoft wants their money back,.LOL
Don't know about that.
People curse WinMo. However, BlackBerry are less intuitive, by far. With WinMo the button I click without knowing the app or OS is always the right button. The menu I go to is the righ menu. With BlackBerry it is half and half. Items are hard to find, email are ugly (light years behind pocket outlook), and in some cases you need to use one button and in other another.
I agree with you. I think BlackBerry's UI is ugly, convoluted and unintuitive. I never understood how it got to be so popular other than I guess they were ahead in feature-set about 5-10 years ago.
I disagree with you. HTML e-mail looks great on the Blackberry. Sure, it does not have the smooth transition effects but all of that fancy work eats battery life, one of the many reasons (also see true Push e-mail) battery life on the Blackberry is superior when compared the iPhone and WinMo devices. And as it goes for an intuitive interface, I think that is a per-user opinion. I deal WinMo and BlackBerrys frequently and I much prefer the Blackberry menu interface. The Blackberry is filled with hotkeys which can allow you to fire though the menu systems, I do which they set out some kind of pocket-size cheat cheat with each Blackberry because I will agree that discovering those is not the most intuitive experience.
As it goes for the hiring of Don Lindsay, I think its good news. The timing is right because data feeds (ie flick, twitter, Facebook, e-mail, sms, MMS), networks (3G, 4G), processors, screens (see OLED) and batteries (hopefully we make quick ground here) are getting to the point where a graphic intensive GUI is more and more necessary to the basic operation a phone. The N97 seems to get that, but lets see how it works in the real world before we conclude anything.
So, from what I gather, he landed himself a RIM job.
Good one The Dude.
Those are three companies I'd never want to work for. I'm too lazy to have a real boss.
If you study engineering at one of the universities closest to the RIM headquarters (McMaster, Waterloo, Western, or U of Toronto), this joke gets old fast. I want it to be funny again...I really do.
"he lead the OS X user experience group, which the Ottawa Citizen reports created the user experience for the iPhone; that's all well and good, but how much influence could he really have had in the mobile space if he left Cupertino way back in 2004?"
Apple users point out that the iPhone had been in development for two years prior to its release. That means he was on the team that got it going. So depending on how many revisions they had, he could have been a major player.
But since he left Apple to work for Microsoft, he is obviously an opportunistic poser that really was never a loyal part of the Apple family, and needs to have his credibility questioned?
Actually on here I've most often heard the 3 year figure and it came out in 2007 so that would put this guy at having left apple just before they started work on the iphone.
Yeah, he might have been on the iPhone team for 5 minutes. Since he left at the very beginning of development for the iPhone, it's probably safe to say that he had nothing to do with the final product. Unless, of course, you think that it didn't change at all in 3 years of development.
@ Jorvay
LOL yea..too true.
Im about to shoot myself in the face..but my mom works for RIM in waterloo and yea..you can tell where the jokes lead to with my friends..
sigh
please noone hurt me :(
well, i could definitely see RIM moving to two separate groups of phones, business (like what they've been doing for years) and general consumer.
I wanna work for Rim.
"For all its flaws"
What flaws? I've spent eight months of heavy use with my iPhone and I have literally no complaints, particularly not with the gorgeous, functional interface. Care to substantiate your shit-stirring? Oh no, that's right, internet journalism isn't a profession is it? More a lucrative hobby.
If only we could hold you to the same standards to which we hold ourselves before you're allowed to make a comment like this.
Even a half-assed attempt to search for iPhone UX complaints will yield plenty of results, some of which you may agree with and others you may not. See:
- Notification management
- Copy / paste (which, let's be honest, certainly didn't exist at any point during Lindsay's involvement)
- Utter lack of app organization capabilities
- Lack of an information-rich home screen
The list goes on, but I'm not going to humor you. Would it have been more professional of me to 1) call the iPhone perfect when it's clearly not (no device is) or 2) detail every claim I make in every article I write, when even the weakest attempt to search for what I'm talking about would get you what you're looking for? No on both counts.
Sorry to say it, but how iPhone's interface is innovative? Palm came up with that concept in 1998 - a bunch of icons arranged in columns and rows. The only difference is The Icons.
WinMo is the gorgeous and functional interface - it can be customized to be anything you want. Anything, including looking identical to iPhone, Palm or BlackBerry. Or it can be WinMo, and add-ons like SPB Shell or TouchFlo will make it the most functional and interactive UI.
Sorry if this is a duplicate post, I'm not getting any confirmation that this is being posted up and reloading the page it doesn't show, but anyway:
"Even a half-assed attempt to search for iPhone UX [sic] complaints will yield plenty of results" and so will a search for praise of the iPhone's UI, making the exercise rather fruitless.
What would have been more professional would be to present the objective, as is a journalist's job, rather than presenting your views as fact as you did with such an uncompromising phrase as "For all its flaws". It is my job as reader to fill in the subjective and possibly leave a comment about my view. You are writing your article as if it were a comment. I am writing my comment as if it were a comment. That's why I don't have to meet any standards while you do.
I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken about the function of this site. We're opinionated and we're not afraid to let our opinions be known, and that's always been the case. Today your first day here? If you're looking for sterile, opinion-free news, I'd recommend Reuters or maybe a good national newspaper.
Also, UX isn't a [sic], it's an industry-standard acronym for user experience.
If the iPhone is so perfect why are they releasing iPhone OS 3 ? Nothing is perfect don't so stupid your opinion is not the only one that matters and not everyone uses a phone like you do (like spunking all over its shiny perfection)
@Stph2409.... Chill out man. Not everyone is a Apple Fanboy. You have to understand that the iPhone works great for you, but just because it works great for you does not mean it will for everyone else. That's what a journalist understands. The iPhone is a CONSUMER PHONE. Its far, far from ready for the Corporate environment. From its lack of Push (lets see how well 3.0 really works), remote management (if I loose my Blackberry Corporate can wipe the memory), to its lack of encryption standards and battery life the iPhone may get all the glory but has nothing but a fancy menu system and 10,000s useless applications to back it up. So, I am happy for you and your iPhone, just understand that just because its the perfect device for you, it may be far from perfect for someone else.
UX is incorrect in my opinion, in as much as you're supposed to be talking about a User Interface 'guru' not a user experience 'co-ordinator' or whatever you'd call such a person. Quite apart from that, sic is an adverb, not a noun, so I quite agree with you that 'UX isn't a sic' because there is no such thing as 'a sic'.
Thank you for correcting my mistake in believing that this is a serious news site.
Ha! Mature argument, sir... well played. Strong work pretending you didn't know what I meant, and accepting only the strictest standards of grammar in comments.
Anyhow, best of luck finding a news source more to your tastes!
He didn't design the iPhone UI he worked on OSX, then Windows Live then Windows Vista now he's joined RIM.
It's really just an attempt to create a news story out of very little. "iPhone designer moves to RIM OMG!!!"
Outside of Apple or Microsoft there really isn't many other places for a top UI designer to work, he really only has RIM or Nokia left that will meet his salary demands.
You miss the point Engadget.
RIM's Blackberry bold, among which I am, love what's loveable about it : real geat multitask, quick and super responsive UI, best email client ever and so on.
We don't just like it because it's different from the iPhone... how could you be so apple centered !
Lot's of things make the bold or the Storm a better phone, for some people, than the iPhone is.
As sure as lots of other things make the iPhone better too, like safari or the iPod player.
It's really a question of hierarchy of your needs and wants, not of taste.
Make the iPhone fully multitask, and more reliable, double the battery life (make it a removable battery while you're at it !) and I might consider it.
If you just changed the UI to look like the Bold it would still not be good for me because that's absolutely not the problem !
RIM's blackberry bold USERS sry.
I've never commented on Engadget before, but I feel obligated to with this article's misinformation. Don Lindsay never designed the iPhone, nor does he claim to; from his LinkedIn profile:
"- Directed Apple UX team responsible for Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.3 releases,
- Shipped every Mac OS release from 8.0 through 10.3, [...]"
"Led the Mac OS X interface concept project and directed the Design team responsible for the User Experience for Mac OS X 10.0-10.3 including first generation iLife applications. Contributed to every Mac OS release from 8.0 through 10.3."
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dlindsay
Disclosure is that I work at Microsoft Live Labs but didn't know Don closely. Just wanted to submit this correction. Thanks!
He was hired to fix the Storm not to reinvent the Curves and Bolds.