Microsoft Design Week 2022

It’s been an amazing time celebrating Microsoft Design Week with our design community here! Traditionally an internal event only, this is the first year that programing from Design Week—an annual grassroots effort that brings our 6,000+ person design community together—will be publicly available through a selection of curated talks. From talks on Fluent and how Azure designs for complex systems, to cognitive models for inclusive design and burgeoning notions of humanity-centered design, we aim to learn, inspire, provoke, and inform. ?

Design Week always reminds me of how far design culture has come at Microsoft and beginning to making it public feels indicative of three distinct trends I’ve seen grow over the years: designing in the open, becoming a true global community, and broadening the definition of design. From deciding to open-source almost all of our Fluent emoji library, to embracing tools that democratize design across myriad disciplines, designing out loud has moved our culture and products forward. It allows us to build on each other's ideas, internalize key learnings, and move past the kinds of closed and hierarchical norms that so often hinder product development.??

Design Week always reminds me of how far design culture has come at Microsoft and beginning to making it public feels indicative of three distinct trends I’ve seen grow over the years: designing in the open, becoming a true global community, and broadening the definition of design.

That same spirit of inclusivity is also what’s giving this year’s Design Week a global focus—Connection is this year’s theme—which is key because our design community resides literally all over the world. Beyond creating a more inclusive employee experience, enacting a globally conscious mindset that leverages multiple understandings and approaches (versus an assumed Western core) creates more equitable products for our customers and can help bridge the digital divide. We’ll soon share a series called “In Conversation With,” where we highlight discussions happening across our design centers in India, Africa, and China, so stay tuned!?

As to the third change—broadening the definition of design—this has been fascinating to watch unfold because I believe that Microsoft has always been a design company, we just had an overly narrow definition of design. That may sound surprising; let’s be honest, Microsoft wasn’t the Silicon Valley company known as the tastemaker. But if design is about understanding and bridging the gaps between human needs and human potential, design thinking helped realize Bill Gates' vision of a personal computer on every desktop and prompted Satya to reimagine Microsoft as a cloud company empowering every person on the planet. It also created our heritage products, Windows and Office, which took multi-disciplinary teams collaborating to creatively solve problems at the scale of humanity.??

Design’s true power isn't as a noun, the discipline, but as a verb: the multi-disciplinary act of conscious creation. That’s a subtle but powerful shift because it prevents myopia. All disciplines design, our materials just differ; engineers design code, lawyers design policy, writers design narratives. Design as a verb opens up product design in a way that becomes particularly important when you consider the sea change that generative AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion will create in productivity spaces (something I’ll write more about soon!). ?

But enough of my musings – check out those of my uber talented colleagues, mentors, and mentees at the link below! I’d also love to know your own thoughts on the evolution of design culture (in or beyond the tech industry) and any suggestions you might have for future Design Week speakers and topics.????

Full Design Week Playlist

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