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I’m sure I’m not the only one who had a survey from ‘MSN Research’ on some thoughts around a slightly revised interface and advertising model for Windows Live Mail.

The email read as follows:

Dear Windows Live Mail User,

Thank you for being one of the first users of the Windows Live Mail Beta programme. We are constantly working to improve the service and love to get your feedback.

Please take a moment to complete the following survey on the design of the Windows Live Mail environment and the advertising opportunities within it. This questionnaire should take no more than 10 minutes to fill out and you must be 18 years or older to participate.

Click [here] to go to the survey. If the link does not work, please copy and paste the following URL into your browser.

http://websurvey.cheesejamcoal.com/replaced.asp?=ninjas

Thank you in advance for your time. And keep your eye out for new features in the Beta based on YOUR feedback!

Yours sincerely,

The Beta Mail Research Team

What followed was a impressive slideshow of screen mock-ups for a slightly different Live Mail interface. Before the slideshow started though I was greeted with a full screen animating advert. Lots of motion, lots of sneakers, wobbling and otherwise trying to draw my eye. I clicked continue, not knowing that this was part of the ‘test’.

What followed was a procession of screenies.

I thought that the screenshots were just there to show off some new interface designs. But it was much more than that. There were cleverly placed adverts, not just the list of related Google Adwords links like Gmail has, but very visual, very eyecatching adverts. Funnily enough I only remembered the one with the sneakers and couldn’t even remember the name of the company. Ah well.

Following that I was asked to move my cursor on screen to the point that I was actually looking at. A variety of shapes would appear on screen, triangles in this case, and I would point to the triangle. The triangle would then disappear and another one would appear and so on. Then some more classic advertisements appeared on screen and I was asked to trace my mouse over what I was actually looking at. A man in a smart suit appeared - it turned out it was an advert for Boss - and I traced my mouse pointer over the guy’s face then circled around on his jacket. It was then I became conscious of what I was doing and perhaps what this whole exercise was about.

After the adverts the same screens of Live Mail appeared and I was asked to do the same again. I found myself not immediately moving my mouse over the unread mail necessarily, but moving it immediately to wherever there was a picture, normally of people and I’d always focus on the face of the person or persons in the picture. Even the picture of whos mailbox this belonged to up in the top right corner drew my attention over my actual mail. “It’s so different to Outlook.. especially at work” I thought. Nothing distracts me from the piles of email I get there.

So the guys at MSN / Microsoft are plugging the advertising model into their Live Services. I found this to be a very interesting exercise. I’ll never see the results of the test, but maybe the results of the analysis of the tests will make themselves evident in the next Beta release of Live Mail. Fascinating stuff. Lend me your eyeballs once again…