This weekend I returned from MIX09, a Microsoft-sponsored conference aimed at user experience designers and developers.

The event was a welcome break - not only did my wife and I get a few days away for ourselves (we have two young kids, so that doesn't happen very often) but we also enjoyed hot weather in Las Vegas - and I was able to attend some excellent sessions and meet a variety of interesting people from across the industry.

I went to MIX09 because I knew it would be a different crowd than other conferences such as Web Directions North or SXSW. Sure, it'd be Microsoft-centric, but increasingly so is my work. I was also much more interested in learning about how modern web applications are planned, designed and built rather than conversations about social media (teasing).

As for what I learned at MIX09:

Agencies such as Intergen and Razorfish are doing some amazing things with Microsoft SharePoint 2007. The session led by Tony Jones was one of my favourites because he detailed the entire Razorfish project lifecycle and development process, peppering his stories with humour and humility.

What was particularly interesting for me about the Razorfish presentation was how different ExpressionEngine is from SharePoint. I've long believed that, if architected well, ExpressionEngine was the answer to most website projects, but when you see how SharePoint is constructed and what it can do (user authentication, e-commerce,, third-party integration, re-use of data etc.) ExpressionEngine falls way short, as do most of its competitors.

To be fair, I'm comparing apples to oranges, as plain ol' ExpressionEngine websites can start at $15,000 while I've heard most SharePoint websites start at $300,000, but still, you can see why SharePoint carries the price tag it does.

I really enjoyed the Designing the Windows 7 Desktop Experience session by Stephan Hoefnagels, a UX designer at Microsoft. It was incredible to hear about the design process behind Windows 7 and learn how much effort, cost and time delivering this level of operating system eats up. Particularly interesting for me was seeing how each iteration builds upon the previous and all of the usability testing and collaboration that goes into developing even the tiniest of features.

Finally, I went to a few different sessions specific to application user experience design: Improving UX through Application Lifecycle Management, User Experience Design Patterns for Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Advance Your Design with UX Design Patterns. What I realized from these sessions was two-fold:

1) The application design and development workflow I currently use, as do a lot of people, is out-dated and inefficient. Instead of sketching interfaces on paper and later translating those drawings to a Visio document which then gets re-designed as polished artwork, then built into HTML/CSS and finally integrated into a prototype application, there exists products such as SketchFlow which will take my sketches and turn them into a clickable prototype. Artwork still needs to be produced, but getting to a usable prototype is much faster.

If building a Silverlight or WPF appilcation, I can go a step further and use Microsoft Expression Blend 3 to create my artwork and test it with actual data from the application, rather than waiting for the development team to integrate my design into their build. The code that Blend creates is even re-usable by developers and the software includes built-in collaboration and source code control tools.

2) I absolutely must start using a common visual and interaction design framework in all the work I do. The rationale is because when designing larger applications, I find that my traditional processes simply aren't cutting it.

With many screens to create, plus all of the individual validation and system messages to design and write, it can be a real headache to maintain consistency in language and presentation, especially after the system goes into production. Using a common framework that I can apply to all projects will greatly help me, and my co-workers + clients, in this regard.

All in all, I had a great time at MIX09. Everything was very well organized and with all of the free products, books and treats (oooh, free Red Bull) I felt like royalty.

If, in the future you're looking for a conference to attend, I strongly suggest checking out MIX. Even if you're not a Microsoft-based designer or developer, there's still a ton to learn and apply to your own design business or corporate gig.