We Got Served

Kynan Antos works on the Windows Home Server team as a User Experience Designer. He’s currently writing an 11 part blog on how the WHS user experience was developed, from March 2005 to today. It’s a great insight into the thinking behind user interface development. Here are a couple of the screens already posted as a taster…

As you can see, these are really clean, basic, almost minmalist screenshots, based on Windows Vista’s Aero UX. Obviously, being based on Windows SBS, Windows Home Server uses the common Windows Classic interface rather than Aero, but it’s interesting to see elements of the Aero UX (mainly the “flare”) being introduced with the CTP, and of course, a MCE-style setup wizard now being included in the product.

Creating such a simple, easy to use UX on top of what is a very complex product must have been a huge design challenge - I’m looking forward to reading more about it.