‘Microsoft’s building its design muscle very quickly’

The elephant seems to be out of its slumber. Having been trounced by design-led rivals such as Apple and Google in the recent past, software giant Microsoft is looking to transform into a design-friendly company itself. Surya Vanka leads the team that oversees best practices and engineering standards in creating better user experiences at the Seattle-based company. Nirmal John of DNA Money caught up with him for a chat when he was in India recently. Excerpts:

Is there a movement towards simplicity in designing gadgets and software?
The Zune (the iPod competitor from MS) interface is emblematic of one of the directions. If you have seen the Zune, you notice that there is a definite decision to let the content shine through.

So you see there are no extraneous features added there. That is an example of simplicity. If you have seen the new version of Office, there is an attempt there also to put to use a similar idea. The idea is to take hundreds and hundreds of features and bring only what is relevant and what is contextual. At Microsoft, we get deeper and deeper into technology every year.

The shift now is that we do and try to demystify these things. That kind of filtering happens after you get a deep understanding of users, their lives and their practices. We are interested in understanding them at three different levels: what makes our products highly useful to them; what makes what we make highly useable to them; and what makes what we make highly desirable to them. All these things combined is certainly driving towards simplicity.

Was Microsoft late in this kind of a shift to simplicity, especially compared with Google and Apple?
Google is a different story. Their search page is where you see Google as the epitome of simplicity. It might not be true of a lot of their other products.

Apple has done a really good job in that they have made simplicity a part of their brand. They also have a good amount of success designing software. As far as our commitment to simplicity is concerned, we have products which are of super high level complexity. In these areas, we have a high commitment to making things simpler. In some products, like Office 2007, we have already reached a level of simplicity for the level of complexity which is there. There are other products which are along this journey.

Consumer products are about always simplifying. There are certain complications which are involved in, say, Windows. It is a platform which supports 6,00,000 to 7,00,000 other vendors. So, there is a huge challenge there to get everybody to move with you. It is always the first target for security breaches, which means you have to keep it simple and at the same time secure.

What are the new products which are in the pipeline, in which Microsoft would flex its design muscle?
There are some really good design challenges up ahead. Some of it is not what Microsoft has been associated with in the past. Look out for the next generation Windows Mobile. There are some very interesting design elements there. Then there is the successor to the Xbox 360.

There is no release date yet, but there is Windows 7 on its way. I’m not at liberty to speak about it, but there are some very interesting things coming down the line. So, there are a large number of new products coming, which should show that there is really a new Microsoft. We are building our design muscle very quickly.

How much of this work is done from India?
There is a reasonable amount of work being done from India. Our India development centre is the fastest growing part of Microsoft. We have recently hired the head of the design team for India from Google India.

Internationally, we’ve definitely got the wind behind our sails. The head of design from Nike joined us recently. The guy who designed Apple OS joined us recently. The head of Motorola design joined us recently. It just goes to show our commitment to design. We have close to 800 designers now. When I joined there were just about 35 or 40 designers. So this is really a major investment for the company. Our executives have really bought into it. (Steve) Ballmer talks about it a lot.

How does design, especially of software, adapt itself in a multi-screen world?
I would actually begin by saying that we have made some mistakes in this area, but we have learned from it. Seven or eight years ago, we tried to create a seamless experience, a sort of consistency between the laptop, the desktop and the mobile screen. Now what we really do is to think about what is the 2-inch experience, what is the 16-inch experience and what is the 6-foot experience.

These are three different experiences, which you can have through Microsoft products. While we do try and leverage learnings from one to the other, there is very little similarity between these mediums. For example, the start menu doesn’t have to be the same way. Or the pointer might not be a part of your experience in some of these screens.

The relationships between these are not visual surface oriented; instead, these are scenario-level connections. So there is a different kind of hierarchy. You can’t look at just a graphic user interface layer to drive consistency. We need to do deep
design.
n_john@dnaindia.net