If you'd like to get the chance to participate in an API usability study and give us your feedback about Avalon, Indigo, WinFS or other APIs, sign up as a usability participant at http://www.microsoft.com/usability/.

We're running studies fairly regularly (for example, next week we are running studies on the Avalon Sidebar API and on the new C++ on .Net syntax). For each study, participants normally come into the labs on the Microsoft campus for anywhere between 2 and 4 hours and work on a number of tasks using a specific API. We get great feedback from people while watching them work. As a token of our appreciation, participants get to choose one or two pieces of software (depending on how long their session is) from a list of software that includes Visual Studio .Net if you come in for a developer study.

We tend to do most of our studies here on the main campus in Redmond, WA, but I'd encourage people to sign up even if you don't live anywhere near here. We always try to set up usability studies wherever and whenever a major conference takes place. For example, there were a number of usability studies that took place in LA during the PDC. So, if you're interested, please sign up and help us improve the quality of our products.