My post last week on the poor set-up experience we had in getting our new Microsoft Surface running has struck a chord. Until last week, our sleepy little company blog could count on about 20 hits a day (thanks Mom!), and as of today we’ve gotten over 20,000.
I should have known what a potent potion I was brewing - world’s biggest technology company + hot new product + usability = lots of opinion.
But I’d like to make 2 things clear to this new, enormous audience -
1) the Surface unit itself is a fantastic touch-screen computing experience (as you can see in this short video), the usability of which is as highly polished as the iPhone - my critique was limited to the one-time set-up of the unit alone.
2) the poor set-up experience I described was the result of a simple error - had the use case that Microsoft envisioned happened correctly, I would never have had to struggle to find the power supply input.
Turns out that Microsoft offers the Surface in two flavors - “Commercial” & “Developer”. The “Commercial” model is designed for businesses that order multiple units to run the same application in different locations, and at $12,500 it comes with a comprehensive installation service as part of the purchase agreement. The “Developer” option delivers essentially the same piece of hardware , but at $2,500 more it comes with additional SDK licenses and 2 full days of training in Seattle for a Designer & Developer. Additional instructions come with this unit, as well as an invitation to an online community complete with helpful instructional videos and articles. It is clearly designed for the use-case we were.
You can see how this makes sense — many units, you just need someone to deploy them in many locations and then teach the people at those locations how to turn it off an on. Just one unit, they train you how to be become an expert operator.
The person who purchased our Surface ordered the “Commercial” unit, but then scheduled the installation service to be performed at the business conference where we were going to unveil the Surface and our application 2-weeks later. Thus, we were delivered a unit designed to be set-up by someone else, in another time and place.
As the helpful Jason McConnell from Microsoft explained to me on a phone call earlier today, “Your blog post took us all by surprise - it was valid from your perspective, and funny, but it shouldn’t ever have happened.” He then added that one part of my post that they are looking at addressing is with the initial set-up screen - “We want to add some goodness right there - the user shouldn’t have to wait to be greeted with some of the excitement of the product”.
As with any brand-new product, there are bound to be hiccups. It is reasonable to argue that our use-case wasn’t that far-fetched, that someone along the way should have helped us realize we were going off-path, or that the documentation should have been sufficient to set the unit up without assistance. That didn’t happen, but with anything as complex as the Surface - and as necessarily big an organization as Microsoft is - it isn’t surprising that this slipped throught the cracks.
However, I really do appreciate the folks at Microsoft taking the time and care to reach out to me and find how they can improve their delivery process and ensure a similar tale isn’t told in the future. And, as I want to stress again, I really do appreciate the fantastic usabilty experience that they have produced with the Surface product. It is a great platform that will be exciting to watch develop in the future.
And thank you for reading our sleepy blog - come back next week when we talk about our love of Tito’s Burrito’s in Morristown, NJ!
So, what's the big problem?
Obviously Microsoft forgot to hire someone who understands how to prepare a set of instructions or to write an operating handbook.
I say "forgot" because after purchasing, setting up and using hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of MS stuff in the past, I know they've done the job correctly in the past, if not now.
What I really got out of this is that some laid off Oracle writers must have gotten the MS contract for writing the stuff, because 100% of it sounds just like the nonsense they used to spew.
Thank goodness I no longer need to deal with MS or Oracle under a performance deadline.
Swordmaker this is all very interesting. Can this touchscreen run java — it would be cool to run local services and integrate with existing endpoints. These units are pricey though huh — 12k +? Why can’t you just run a touchscreen usb device connect to a laptop running a linux kernel and have a hardware / software solution < $5k.
The X graphics in the latest linux systems are just as appealing as anything M$FT is doing ++. Don’t get me wrong, these units are very cool and I would love to hack some C# code to run on it to do something useful. The open systems linux / java usb touchscreen implementation seems would meet pretty much any business purpose imaginable. What are you guys developing on these systems that it needs the M$FT API’s?
Cheers - always good to read an extremely articulate engineering description of some cool technology and your post is world-class.
Can you put a cup of coffee on it without it blowing up?
A few things tell me the only folks who are going to buy this are schools and government offices and corporations who have money to waste. It may have a coolness factor but I expect it to wear off just as quickly as the initial frustration of setting it up. Looking down into a table top device may seem neat but who really wants to be in that position for an extended period of time? Microsoft has produced an expensive novelty device and if it takes off I will be surprised. I don’t need a table sized Iphone. Give me touch capabilities on a standard desktop screen then I might be interested. Give me a touch screen style hybrid display keyboard to go along with a regular display and I might be with it but something like this has zero ROI.
of course, letting the reader know that you’re a mac fanboi would help establish the bias filter right off.