Articles Tagged ‘microsoft’
Mar. 22nd, 2009
Douglas Bowman, a damned fine designer, just quit his job at Google due to basic, deep-set cultural differences:
When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.
Back when we did a project in cooperation with Microsoft, they were desperately seeking visual designers, they made me an offer, and I briefly considered a move to Seattle. What stopped me pretty quickly was the realisation that they’re a mountain of engineers, and being a singular designer under that mountain would make me about as effective as being under Mt. Rainier. Their culture relegates design to mere decoration, and there’s little to no chance they will ever understand what design is and what it can do at a deep, cultural level.
If companies have such a deep and immutable culture (Google = engineers, Apple = design) how can they include and learn from the other? Should they even try? Maybe they are what they are, and so successful at it, because of the concentration and blindness to any other way to do things? When all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, but you also get really good at banging nails.
I wish Doug an environment where design is an ingredient of the culture and where his considerable talents will be taken full advantage of!
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May. 21st, 2007
Since when does Microsoft get it? Sure, the ways in which the internet changes the relationship between advertisers and consumers isn’t exactly breaking news, but Microsoft’s new ad is the best and most humourous summary of the changes that I’ve seen so far.
Of course the authenticity of the blog to the movie is so questionable it’s not even worth thinking about, but the clip is spot on and funny either way.
[via Fischmarkt]
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Mar. 2nd, 2007
Loyal readers are already aware of the OTTO Store and my part in creating it. In a past post I questioned whether this is the future of shopping or not, but left the question unanswered. Well, the answer’s simple. No. It’s not. What is the future of shopping? Step right this way and I’ll explain it all to you. Read on…
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Feb. 2nd, 2007
It’s out, it’s official, and I’m finally allowed to discuss it: the project on which I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the last six months is online. Almost anyone who reads this blog is certain to have at least a vague idea of how a web site comes into being, but most of you are unlikely to have any idea how an application for Windows Vista goes from being an idea to becoming a product. Read on…
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Jan. 30th, 2007
Today, Windows Vista appeared in, according to Bill, 39,000 stores. Quite possibly a big deal for many people who spend as much time in front of a computer as I do, but not for me, at least not when compared to the launch of the OTTO Store. Read on…
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Jul. 6th, 2006
Where I now work, there’s always been a pretty wide gap between development and design. When I started 5 years ago, the design department was a black box into which (once the consultants and developers had a budget, timeline and technical concept mapped out for a project) a briefing would be inserted and after a couple weeks the designers would deliver a stack of screens. We’ve changed a lot in our company, and today it works the other way around: consultants and designers develop a concept and screens, and once they’re done the developers turn them into functional web pages. Designers never write HTML or CSS, and developers are never asked for layout ideas. There’s even a four meter wide physical chasm in our office which seperates design from development.
Neither of these approaches works. Read on…
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Jul. 1st, 2006
A little tip for Microsoft: take a lesson from water, find the path of least resistance and name your products the way people want to call them. Read on…
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