This article is based on an exclusive interview Michael Gough, Chief Design Officer and Vice President of Microsoft USA, gave to Meia during the 2016 International Experience Design Conference. In this interview, Michael talked about inclusive design at Microsoft, and the skills and advice it takes to become a design manager.
You can also click “Interview with Microsoft Chief Design Officer” to watch the full interview video with subtitles (about 11 minutes). The following is the transcript of the interview:
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Meia: In your speech at the conference, you mentioned “love, Tolerance and design”, so our question is how to embody inclusiveness in design and make design serve everyone? Can you give some examples?
Michael: Ok. The first thing to be clear about is that inclusive design is about trying to meet the needs of the potential product market, and everyone has specific needs. Curb slope is a classic example. I don’t know about China, but in the US, the law requires that every sidewalk should be wheelchair accessible, so they have ramps for wheelchairs to go up and down the sidewalk. This is convenient for people in wheelchairs and for everyone. You can walk on the sidewalk without tripping over kerbs, ride up and down sidewalks, and push strollers up. It started with a small group of special people, but ended up meeting the needs of the majority.
Meia: I understand that you are a well-known design educator in the industry. You encourage the next generation of designers to be creative. How do you think Chinese designers should cultivate their creative talent?
Michael: That’s a good question. Fostering creativity is a big challenge. I don’t know much about the Chinese education system, and I still have to learn. But I know a lot about the American education system, and the universal characteristics and preoccupation of American education do not foster creativity very well. There are real problems here. One of the most important challenges we face is trying to get parents to understand what a creative child needs, to discover their creativity, to teach them to their own potential.
Typical creative talents are not welcomed by the school system, often marginalized, and their potential is not well developed. That has to change first. On this basis, we can further discuss the reform of higher education and promote the reform of universities. Existing design teaching programs are trying to meet the needs of application designers and web designers, but there is still a long way to go. We need to do a lot of groundwork to find a way to train good designers. It takes time.
Meia: With Microsoft’s recent acquisition of linkedin, how do you plan to use this opportunity to allow design to lead innovation in service experiences?
Michael: Just to be clear, linkedin now has a lot of design talent. The head of design at linkedin used to work for me. I have a very talented team. The first point about bringing linkedin into the Microsoft family is to be careful. Linkedin is a valuable resource for a lot of people, and we can’t influence the services they’ve been providing. On the plus side, social experiences are at the heart of social ecosystems and social networks, and we need to harness our tools and social service applications to provide useful value to professionals. Microsoft and linkedin are kindred spirits and cater to the same customers, and will fit well with each other.
Meia: Before Microsoft, you designed for Nike and Adobe. From sports industry to Internet products, how has your design concept changed?
Michael: I didn’t start out in either field. I was an architect. The design industry needs to master some basic skills to solve complex problems, and the most important is to have a global vision and focus on the context of the product. So whether it was Nike, Macromedia, Adobe, or now Microsoft, the most important skill I want to cultivate is to let designers know that they need to be able to control the environment in which they work, the environment in which they design their products. They need to understand that customers, business needs, and many other forces affect the product, and they need to understand all of them.
Meia: In recent years, the design industry in China is booming, but many senior designers can only become design director or art director, and it is difficult to go further. Do you have any suggestions?
Michael: I’m happy to offer career advice. Don’t follow in my footsteps. My career has been more like table tennis, trying it one way and then the other. I didn’t have a definite plan, but IT dawned on me that if I wanted to succeed, not just personally, but in a corporate environment, I had to create an environment where design could flourish. I want to maintain the environment step by step, but also push it forward little by little. There are some tricks to this. The first is overexpressing what only one is interested in. It’s fine if you’re obsessed with colors or shapes, but don’t nag your sales or engineering colleagues. In discussions with engineering colleagues, find the goal that both sides are fascinated with, which is to make a quality product without bugs; In discussions with your business team, be as obsessed with the next quarter’s metrics as they are with identifying business needs. You need to step far out of your comfort zone to become a leading designer. So it’s a big challenge, to look at things from other departments’ point of view, to participate in other departments’ discussions.
Meia: A lot of senior designers in China, even design directors, have ocD. When I talk to project managers or engineers, I ask them what they think about designers, and they compare designers to bombs.
Michael: That’s an interesting finding, because no one wants to lose their edge at work. Take the example of ocD. A lot of talented designers have OCD. As long as in the right stage, with the right channels, shortcomings can become advantages. You might be obsessive-compulsive about business needs, you might be obsessive-compulsive about engineering needs. So you can use ocD to your advantage and empathize with your customers. Not only that, but you can also use this strength to understand the needs of your colleagues in other parts of the company.
▼ Meia | www.meia.me by the international association of experience design (IXDC) team building China’s first creative design and fashion aesthetic online sharing platform