Microsoft learns slowly, but Microsoft does learn.

I have been intrigued by what amounts to a tacit admission by Nokia’s head of brand experience, Liisa Puolakka, about the unity of a corporate message and how it can interact with fashion trends – and how Nokia, while it has exciting design, doesn’t have a unified brand experience:

“The main thing is to find the right way, the appropriate way, to get across your point of view. A lot of the fashion companies do it very well, especially Prada, or Marc Jacobs. But also Nike - even though they have a huge range of quite different products, the story and the attitude is consistent. Starbucks is another company which understands very well its own point of view, and gets that story across. Apple of course…”

Photo of Nokia's new brand guidelines...


Read more of her thoughts here:
http://www.pingmag.jp/2006/05/12/new-levels-of-experience-design/

Brand Unity VERSUS Fashion
There is a noticeable tension between brand unity and trendiness (or fashion-sensitivity).

IBM has achieved brand unity, but couldn’t be called trendy, but with the emergence of the PEBL and RAZR Motolora could be seen to have both. Google has brand consistency but its fashion sense could be improved a good bit. The companies Liisa mentions could be on the same list as certain car companies, Coke, and no doubt a long list of highly branded smaller niche players.

Lets add Microsoft to the list.
Microsoft is perhaps a company least associated with fashion or design: it is bland, it is boring, it is lame, it isn't cutting edge...

Somehow everyone thinks that Microsoft makes ugly stuff that isn’t internally consistent. While I am not on Microsoft’s payroll (yet!) I have a high regard for where the lead designers – those anonymous hardworking beige people – are going with the design that emerges from Redmond.

The thing to look at here is how fashion sensitive, brand integrated, and compelling Microsoft design really is. If a company that wasn't microsoft were doing this kind of work, I think people would take notice.

Put another way, here are the questions to ask:
Does it look fun or cool?
Does it look like Microsoft?
Would you buy it?

My answer is yes to all these questions.

Office 2007 icons:




Xbox hardware early sketches:


Xbox settings interface:


Wireless intellimouse:


Phillipe Stark Mouse
"This is the first time we've teamed up with such an iconic designer to create a new product," said Ken Fry, design group director for Microsoft Hardware. "Philippe Starck is known throughout the world for his ability to bring extraordinary design to everyday items, from juicers to luggage, making him a perfect fit for this project. We are excited to create products that allow consumers to show their unique personalities with the products they use each and every day."


Fossil Smart Watch
"Design at Microsoft isn't what it used to be," says Horace Luke, a Platform Strategist in Microsoft Research, leading the effort to expand Microsoft's vision of mobile computing. "Design continues to play an increasingly important and strategic role in our everyday product development process." With a background of image and industrial design, Horace developed both Xbox and Windows XP's visual and brand communication strategy. "Design impacts our customers' experience at each and every individual touch point, whether it is the product, the retail experience, or brand communications."


Live Thumbnails in Windows Vista
Really nice sales site: http://www.seewindowsvista.com/


Windows Live: http://www.live.com/
Feature set of windows live: http://ideas.live.com/


Microsoft Backoffice: windows dynamics icons

“Product Design in MD [Microsoft Dynamics] plays a broad and important role in not only the visual design but especially the design of software interaction with our users. If we don’t get it right it simply won’t succeed.” Alan Blood, Product Designer


My point?
Clearly Microsoft is bigger than its iconset, and a few screenshots and a guest appearance from Stark won’t convince anyone Redmond is fashionable.

But who wants to bet that Microsoft hasn’t finally figured out that people will respond with loyalty devotion and yes, dollars, to great, brand consistant, fashionable design?

Surya Vanka, Microsoft’s Design and Usability Training Manager, is a former professor of industrial design at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
“Surya says that in the past three to five years, the design community at Microsoft has grown in size and influence to become one of the largest groups of user experience professionals anywhere in the world.

"It's a thriving, vibrant, intellectually stimulating place," Surya says. "There are great opportunities for growth because you're working alongside the world's leaders in design and user experience."

Surya feels that at Microsoft, designers take on challenges that don't happen at most places. "A product that you create here may be used by 800 million people, which is an unprecedented scope for impact," Surya says. "Designers here have amazing reach."

Check out more cool things from Microsoft here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/index.html