Over the seven years that Michael Baynger spent at Corel Corporation he had
the opportunity to work as a software engineer and usability specialist on
a variety of products including CorelDraw (versions 2 to 6), Corel Video,
PrintHouse (version 1), The Art of Playboy CD Rom, and Ventura (version
8).
CorelDraw: Special Effects, 1990 - 94
When Baynger joined the CorelDraw software engineering team as a
special effects visionary, he set about looking for ways to enrich
CorelDraw to permit users to achieve greater expressivity. One of the first
ways he did this was in beefing up the Blend feature for CorelDraw 3 to
make it a dynamic and powerful illustration tool.
The next challenge he took on was 'variable width lines'. This was a
non-trivial undertaking - especially in a 16 bit application that ran on
Windows 3.1. As an artist/engineer Baynger analysed drawings to find out
how the various line types could be best characterized in a general
way.
He invented a system of dynamically mapping information onto vector lines
that far exceeded the limited capabilities of competitors' products which
could only generate static shapes produced by pressure sensitive devices.
Because of the great flexibility and potential for expressive drawing,
Baynger came up with the name 'PowerLines'.
User Interface Specialist, 1994 - 97
Baynger's concern for usability with the clipping feature grew to
become a concern for usability in general and he took on the job of leading
a newly formed user interface design and engineering team for CorelDraw 6.
This was an especially tough challenge since this was the first version to
be released for the new Windows 95 platform.
Looking for more challenges the following year he subsequently accepted a
challenge from Mike Cowpland to design a new graphics application that had
all the ease of use of wizard based program and all the power of CorelDraw.
The result was PrintHouse 1 which got rave reviews and shot to the top of
the sales charts in its first year.
"When I first got involved with this project there was some confusion
about what a 'simpler' version of Draw actually meant. The first
prototypes had been built for kids with lots of wood grain effects and
shiny buttons. I checked with Mike (Cowpland) and he said he was
targeting the huge community of inexperienced adult users who just wanted
to get a poster or a greeting card out in a hurry and didn't want to
learn a complicated program. He got that in spades with
PrintHouse."
Baynger later co-founded the usability engineering team with
Dave Williams. One of the first projects for the team was streamlining the
user interface for Corel Ventura 8.
"This was tricky because Ventura was treated as a sort of 'sacred cow'.
We were told not to mess with it too much because the small community of
Ventura users were pretty fussy and liked things just as they are. But we
looked at it from the point of view of how could we grow that user
community to be more of a mass market - the only way was to make it easy
for a larger spectrum of users.
"We did extensive usability testing of Version 7 - asking a wide variety
of subjects to perform tasks that should be pretty easy to do for any
word processing user. Ventura 7 was like a brick wall for them. We video
taped the whole thing and showed the engineering team what the reality
was. This got them pumped to make the changes and when we came up with
plans for radical UI surgery they jumped into it."
But the real test would be whether the 'community' of Ventura
users would accept the change. Ed Brown, author and expert Ventura user
said in his review for 'Corel User' magazine, June 1998:
"I was initially very skeptical about this approach, but soon I found it
a seamless and intuitive way to work.
"[the new tag dropdown list] works smoothly and simply and after an
initial hesitation I’ve taken to it like a duck to water."
"But the real strength lies in the consistent use of all the same tools
and user interface for all tags."
Multimedia Designer: The Art of Playboy, 1996
When asked to create a CD Rom that showcased 'The Art of Playboy'
Baynger was at first puzzled. The art itself was very high quality, Playboy
having commissioned each work from a wide variety of famous and emerging
artists. It struck him that the greatest strength to this collection was
its sheer variety. As such it presented an opportunity to educate people
about the many ways that art can be created and looked at.
Baynger wondered how to get this learning experience from a multimedia
application. He envisioned something that could draw the user into it like
television and suggest things about each of the works of art that could
open the user's eyes.
Baynger knew his vision for the project could not be realized through the
standard Macromind Director approach. He wanted more 'mystery' to the
experience. So he designed and built a presentation engine in C++ that
could integrate scripted instructions with stochastic processes so that
nothing ever repeated itself exactly.
"I knew I was on the right path when I sat some folks in front of my
prototype. One guy said 'Cool! Makes me want to go get a beer and come
back and watch.' This was a software engineer and he didn't know it but
he was learning about how art works!"
