When Macromedia came out with their Studio MX 2004 almost two years ago, it was heralded with the slogan, “We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it.” It was at that point that I started to develop a distaste for Macromedia. I had been trained on Flash to the point where it was my #1 tool, so to some extent I was interested in the next release regardless of what they did. But people who participated in my Flash workshop can attest to the fact that I’m disenchanted with the improvements offered by the new version.

So two years later, here comes the new version of Macromedia products, Studio 8 (thank you for stopping that ridiculous MX stuff). In the latest release of the Macromedia Edge e-zine, Macromedia uses the lead article to discuss their new design ideology called the “Synchronous Product Development” process which, for the HCI-fluent people in the audience, consists of a contextual inquiry with the old version of Flash (or Dreamweaver or Fireworks or Freehand) and then a feature review.

Now, Macromedia is heralding a brand new customer-centric focus for the Macromedia Studio products! For only $400, the people who were slighted from this customer-centric focus on the last version will be able to see how Macromedia fixed their mistakes. I can’t wait to see what they’ll do with HCI methods. Hopefully it’ll be worth my money.