Tjeerd Hoek on Dutch TV talking about Vista UX

I have no idea what type of variety show invites geeks to talk about an operating system, but the Dutch are leading the way! A TV show called “De wereld draait door” on the Vara network (or “The world keeps turning” as Babel Fish suggests) recently featured Tjeerd Hoek, the director of user experience design for Windows, as a guest to talk about Windows Vista with an unusual focus on the start button.

I don’t understand a word of it except the occasional “Vista”, but Tjeerd had a 12 slide Powerpoint presentation showing quite a number of interesting concept art during the development of the Start button and taskbar from his own laptop. Some of which were cool, some of which are outrageous.

Here’s a few screencaps for the people who don’t have 8 minutes to waste watching a foreign TV show about Windows Vista, which might just possibly be everyone except me.

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If you speak Dutch, and you are a bored beyond belief, please feel free to translate it. ๐Ÿ™‚

Update: My good Dutch friend Andre was kind enough to put together a translated summary of the whole segment. Very interesting stuff. Check it out.

10 insightful thoughts

  1. I’m Dutch and i’ve seen it. He was talking about how they invented the start-button and how he wanted it to let the round get above the startbar. I will try to give a quick summary later on. Have a day of work ahead ๐Ÿ˜‰

  2. I’m Dutch too and I also saw the broadcast! “De wereld draait door” means
    literally “The world keeps turning” but symbolically it means “The world is going (turning) crazy”. It’s ambiguous.

  3. some of those concepts look pretty decent. i particularly liked the bump version that looked like the early vista sidebar.

    the completely transparent taskbar with the centre-aligned buttons (how long did that last really?) was also good, and this was the first time i noticed it with glass on. you never really saw the taskbar in the pdc2003 videos.

  4. Yeah, he was in Holland for the Windows Vista launch. This show was recorded right after the launch event. But it simply went about the various things Tjeerd designed for Windows Vista. He explained how they have tried many start buttons and how thay came up with this one (also called Pearl, i’ve read it somewhere before) Interesting stuff but for many of you nothing new ๐Ÿ˜‰ But great to see this shows up on this blog ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. Quote:
    …A TV show called โ€œDe wereld draait doorโ€ on the Vara network (or โ€œThe world keeps turningโ€ as Babel Fish suggests)…

    Babelfish’s suggestion makes it sound like a well-known soap opera. ๐Ÿ˜‰
    “De wereld draait” means “The world turns”. “De wereld draait door” means “The world is going crazy”. However, it could indeed also be interpeted as “The world keeps on turning”. See, Dutch people are creative. ๐Ÿ˜‰

    It’s more of a late nite show than a variety show by the way.
    Take David Letterman, remove the band and the over-enthusiastic audience, add funny clips and imagine more different items per show. ๐Ÿ™‚

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