In response to the commenter named “woohoo” and the PR person who emailed me with counterpoints to my specific suggestions, my overall point remains. My suggestions may or may not have merit but the bigger issue is that Microsoft simply imitated Apple and did not break new ground with its store.

Plus, details are important — for example, classes aren’t the same thing as ongoing demos (the former requires the customer to be interested in the product enough to schedule their lives around Microsoft; the latter would pique people’s curiosity as they’re browsing and encourage them to seek out more information).

As customer experience design is part of my work I asked a staff member about what they were hoping to achieve and how they were different from the Apple Store. All I got was that the store was (paraphrasing here) “an opportunity to give MSFT as public face as it is softwarr company that traditionally relied on other outlets (retailers, hardward manufacturers) to sell its products.

Yes Kinect is being demoed (way in the back) and there are classes, but overall the extent to which the Microsoft Store is a facisimle of the Apple Store was quite shocking.