UX into the business mainstream
At the UX workshop I had a chance to talk with UK ISV's and see and discuss there approach into UX. MS are working hard to help them visualize how they can push the UX in there applications with WPF. Sometimes that's hard when you see consumer facing applications like Northface or NASCAR which are intended to push the bounderies of UX. In a business application that can sometimes be quite hard to do, it has a goal and can UX muddle that goal. As Ranjith asks "when is the right time to use WPF?", to answer this question you (when I talked with the various folks there I was able to help them see this) need to look at what area of your application as the most visual appeal and where WPF can help. As Ranjith says
WPF should not be used just to be able to have stylish looking UI with zoomable multi-state 3D buttons (whatever that means). For me WPF solves one of the biggest problems with user experience - data visualization. How can an application present complex data to the user that provides a highly flexible and customizable way for the user to find the right item doing very little work (or clicks) or minimal guidance on navigation.
You can refactor your visuals to make them easier to work with and richer in the information they display. When you look at the Infragistics WPF controls you can see new ways of using grids and utlizing the power of WPF to push how the data is reflected in the grids. Also take a look at this post on new ways of displaying data beyond using grids. One of the great examples of a business application that is pushing the UX is the heath care demo, check out the video. Microsoft are working hard to let you folks see this, Tims post reflects this well.
With WPF, we're already starting to see a new wave of applications that redefine user experience. You can see early examples of these by looking at some of the screenshots Karsten posted in his mix06 trip report, but as WPF starts to hit the mainstream, we're going to need to broaden our team to effectively reach and assist consumer and business ISVs, enterprises, and web content publishers.