ROLE
Associate Creative Director
RESPONSIBILITIES
I worked centrally in Windows NEXT, our first-party apps team, to create a usable, coherent, and enjoyable app experience for Windows 10, helping to push and validate the controls and patterns of the Fluent Design System.
OUTCOMES
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As the Associate Creative Director of Windows NEXT, I worked with art directors and creative directors of all the first-party Windows apps (Photos, People, Maps, 3D Viewer, Paint 3D, and Groove Music) as well as the PMs, engineers, and Design leaders of the Fluent Design System.
I helped push and validate all new Fluent controls and patterns, assuring a coherent and enjoyable Windows experience.
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I was the Creative Director for all Win10 Utility apps, including Calculator, Alarms & Clock, Voice Recorder, Word Pad, Notepad, and Snipping Tool.
I employed Calculator as a surface to test and push quality on new Fluent controls, including the "reveal" highlight and the "acrylic" material, raising engagement to over 88M monthly active users (MAU).
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I directed and managed a small team of designers to prototype new ideas for potential Fluent controls.
Our work (over a short four months) generated 7 unique patents for Microsoft.
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I helped organize Design Day 2017, as well as authoring and presenting "Emotion Lotion," a piece of storytelling about the power of emotion on our "productivity" users. I also presented at LinkedIn and to other various internal teams.
The presentation inspired "The Feelings Toolkit," a toolkit to help measure user feelings, employed by the Office app teams, a component in how Microsoft transformed their design approach in the subsequent years.
“How might our design system create that feeling of when you’re falling in love and you see meaning in things you couldn’t before?”
— Bojana Ostojic, Partner Creative Director, Windows
CASE STUDY - FLUENT DESIGN SYSTEM
Coherence With Feeling
TEAM
Creative Director - Michael Harnisch
PM - Roger Kurtz
Engineer - Jeremiah Kemper
Group Creative Director - Casey Hudson
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Work with every 1st party app team to implement the newly authored Fluent Design System in their apps to foster a cohesive and modern look across Windows 10.
Collaborate with the Windows Design Team to best establish the quality of Fluent controls and patterns.
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Help 1st Party App Teams were understand the value of adding Fluent controls to their experiences, as well as define and align on implementation within their ship schedule.
Partner with the Fluent team to help them best support their product team partners while also using the Utility Apps as a testing ground to push and validate the quality and usage of the Fluent controls.
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The Utility Apps become the canary in the coalmine (if the canary lived and invited all of its friends). We worked directly with the Fluent team to land on the right visual formulas and implementation plans for features, such as acrylic and the reveal highlight.
I partnered with our PM to build a shipping framework in which the app teams could use to ensure adopting Fluent controls without missing ship dates.
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The "Reveal" highlight improved significantly using the Calculator buttons as a testing ground.
App teams were able to ship nearly all patterns within the expected Wave 2 timeframe, creating a consistent and modern Windows 10 experience.
We used the Utility Apps as the testing ground for several Fluent controls, adding polish to the final look and feel. UX was also updated based on customer feedback, increasing overall MAU. Additionally, I presented concepts that suggested an AI-driven approach to color implementation that eventually was shipped to customers in Windows 11.
At our annual Design Day, I authored and presented Emotion Lotion, a thesis about the power of emotion on the behavior of our productivity users. Traditionally, emotional design was mostly reserved for entertainment, but I proposed relatable emotions mapped to every step of a user’s journey in order to better design toward their feelings, as well as created more efficient internal alignment. The presentation sparked the creation of The Feelings Toolkit, a framework to start capturing customer feelings as indicators of future NPS (Net Promoter Score) which was adopted across Microsoft, including in Office and Dynamics 365.
LEARNINGS
An Inclusive Process Accelerates Development
Building an inclusive design process in which teams can influence future Fluent investments while also helping to define the “why” for Fluent is integral for a smooth and achievable roadmap. Feelings aren’t just for customers.
Emotions Impact Productivity
“Gallup quantified the link between employee feelings and corporate outcomes, reporting that lost productivity due to disengaged staff costs the U.S. economy up to $350 billion annually. It’s because human emotions are real and they impact a wide range of material business metrics, from a company’s share price, to the value of its brand, through to its customer service rating.”*
*Feelings and Emotion Affect Workplace Performance, Glenn Riseley, link
CASE STUDY - PROTOTYPING TEAM
The Path to Spatial Computing
TEAM
Creative Director - Michael Harnisch
Principal PM - Lori Kratzer
Motion Designer - Jose Rodriguez
Senior Designer - Frank Chen
Tech Artist - Steve DeMar
Group Creative Director - Bojana Ostojic
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Research and ideate future Fluent Design System controls and patterns that can scale from flat screens to fully spatial experiences.
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Showcase how current Fluent controls (Menu, List, Navigation) can meaningfully show up on VR and MR devices to be presented at the Microsoft //Build conference.
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Research highlighted the need for relatable and familiar patterns when onboarding users to new device paradigms. I authored the term "Behavior Skeuomorphism" and worked collaboratively with my team to showcase how these patterns could adapt to new surfaces in ways that are easily usable and add value.
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The session was very well-received at //Build and the work successfully led to 7 patents for Microsoft, establishing roots for the future of Windows spatial computing. A few include:
Next Operation Prediction for a Workflow
Predictive Application Functionality Surfacing
Inter Application Context Seeding