Start universal
Make it personal
We’re elevating our perspective. We’re evolving our design principles and practices. These inform how our experiences look, feel, function, and behave.
Our Evolution
We’re on an amazing journey—together
In 2010 we inspired the industry with a new look and feel based on the International Typographic Style. We call this the Microsoft Design Language.
Today, this shared foundation still aligns and guides us. But our designs also need to adapt to human diversity.
We aim for cohesion, not uniformity. Our next step is to expand beyond visual style with an inclusive design practice. As we connect and evolve, so will our design tools, products, and community.
Why We Make
Human beings have been at the center of design practices for a long time. These practices are the foundation for our work. Yet as technology becomes more capable we need new models for how it should behave. We use human behavior to guide our designs, draw inspiration from human interactions, and let people lead the way.
This helps us understand the many roles that technology plays in one person’s life. And makes us mindful of universal human needs like control, trust, and dignity.
Simply put, the Microsoft Design principles guide why, how, and what we make. They’re what make a designer a Microsoft designer.
Think universal
We focus on what unifies people—human motivations, relationships, and abilities. This drives us to consider the broader social impact of our work. The result is an experience that has a diversity of ways for all people to participate.
Make it Personal
Next, we challenge ourselves to create emotional connection. Human-to-human interactions can inspire better human-to-technology interaction. A person’s unique circumstances can improve a design for everyone. The result is an experience that feels like it was created for one person.
Keep it Simple
We start with simplicity as the ultimate unifier. When we reduce clutter people know what to do next. They’re inspired to move forward into spaces that are clean, light, and open. The result is an experience that’s honest and timeless.
Create Delight
Delightful experiences evoke wonder and discovery. Sometimes it’s magical. Sometimes it’s a detail that’s just right. We design these moments to feel like a welcomed change in tempo. The result is an experience that has momentum and flow.
How We Make
We design together as a family, across many disciplines. How well we work together determines how well our products work for customers.
People interact with our products in diverse ways. It’s our job to make sure their experience is both cohesive and inclusive, from the smallest details to the most expansive systems.
Here are a few examples of how human diversity is shifting our design practices.
Inclusive Design Toolkit
In 2001 the World Health Organization redefined disability as “a mismatch in interaction between the features of a person’s body and the features of the environment in which they live”. As designers, our work can create or remove these mismatches in interaction.
We’ve developed a toolkit to show how human diversity can create better design constraints. And how to connect seemingly niche solutions to broader markets. This toolkit can be used with any existing design processes.
It’s a work in progress. We invite you to try it out and help us make it better.
Partnerships
We partner with schools, non-profits, filmmakers, and companies as a way to expand our perspective. These design collaborations focus on organizations that share our belief in cultural relevance, shared ideas, and an inclusive approach to problem solving.
Contact us at InclusiveDesign@Microsoft.com
Letting people lead the way
In partnership with Guide Dogs and Future Cities Catapult and other organizations, Microsoft teams spent over 2 years developing a solution for helping people who are visually impaired to navigate cities. The team spent time in the field observing and experiencing first-hand the challenges with urban way-finding. This empathetic inclusion of people in every step of the design process allowed for a solution that was driven by the interaction between people and their environment. It’s people rather than technology in the lead.
Design Expo
Students from eight top design schools from around the world created inclusive solutions for today's world problems. They worked with faculty and Microsoft advisers and pitched their solutions in Redmond, WA on July, 29, 2015.
Captivated by Her: A design experiment
In 2013, we were putting final touches on Cortana when the trailer for Her was released. We called the film makers and they invited us to prescreen the film. We were deeply moved by this amazing love story. But it also painted an optimistic and human-led future for interaction design. We were inspired to connect the film to the work we do for operating systems at Microsoft. We partnered with the film makers to host two student workshops based one question: How can human emotions inspire new interactions with technology and each other?
Workshops, sprints and hackathons
These are ongoing practices to find new approaches to tough challenges. Whether it’s dedicating our time to design solutions with a nonprofit or connecting with customers face-to–face, it’s all about creating new connections to each other’s work. Great designs come from designers who are connected to each other and the world around them.
Ability Summit
The fifth annual event is a way to bring Microsoft's approach to diversity and inclusion to life. Engineers, designers and other tech pros will work side-by-side with people with a spectrum of disabilities from inside and outside Microsoft. Through educational sessions, a hackathon, and including people in our design process we learn through each summit how to make products that are deeply personal and that adapt to social, physical, cultural, and environmental context.
Maker spaces
Our design work combines digital and physical experiences. We have world-class model shops and hobbyist maker lounges. Some of the latest apps from Microsoft were incubated in The Garage by employees who had a simple vision and a passion for making it real. Whether it’s a science fair, soldering lesson, or the next product for customers, our maker spaces are hubs to learn and explore with talented people from across Microsoft.
MakerU community
MakerU is a community-led initiative where designers learn and teach each other new and different ways to express our creativity and ideas. Workshops range from prototyping with electronics and microcontrollers to building guitar pedals, making chocolate molds, or even designing cosplay costumes. MakerU is a space where we can build, break, tinker, and experiment together.
What We Make
What we make reflects why we’re here and how we work. The Microsoft Design Language is evolving to connect a system of experiences with a cohesive look, feel, and behavior. Here are some examples of our design principles in practice.
The ways that people work
There are many roles that technology plays in our lives. People who perform similar roles on a daily basis understand the functional and emotional nuances. From personal assistants to professional organizers to mobility instructors, we learn from human expertise and experience as a model for designing interactions with technology.
Skype Translator
Inspired by human translators, Skype Translator helps people communicate in real time across the barriers of culture, language, and geography. We use speech recognition, automatic translation, and machine learning to help make the experience fit a person’s unique way of speaking. We aim to make it possible for people of all languages and hearing abilities to participate in universal conversations.
Cortana
We spent time with real assistants to learn what makes them truly personal and trustworthy. We learned that transparency and control are universally important aspects of trust. Cortana’s Notebook is inspired by this insight, giving people a place to review and adjust what they want Cortana to know. This helps her do a better job of anticipating needs and adapting to preferences. Every way that Cortana interacts with people, from her jokes to her visual style, is designed with a careful consideration of human context.
Universal Windows Platform apps
The digital world surrounds us with devices of different sizes and shapes. Universal Windows Platform apps, which can run on any Windows-powered device, connect us to our favorite experiences no matter where we are or what device we’re using.
Inspired by human interaction
Eye contact, a nod of recognition, or a smile are important cues between people. These interactions are simple and universal, yet full of personal and cultural nuances. They inspire us to design experiences that incorporate the things that make people unique.
HoloLens
People naturally learn, create, and work in a three-dimensional world. Yet most digital experiences are limited to two-dimensional screens. HoloLens is designed for how people interact with the physical world, overlaying a digital world with the real world. The result is transformative, yet familiar, ways of working together.
Windows Hello
Names and faces are two of the most important things we remember about people after we first meet them. Remembering names and faces helps us to recognize other people when meeting them again in the future. Securely unlocking a computer multiple times a day should be just as simple. Inspired by the way people acknowledge one another, Windows Hello is designed to learn the unique features of your face to seamlessly unlock for you, and only you.