Bill Buxton to change Microsoft from within

"Last year at the company meeting Steve Ballmer said quite clearly to 85,000 employees 'If you don’t change and you don’t go in this direction, we’re dead, and I don’t want to die.' I wanted to go hug him when he said that."

So says Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft, interviewed at the company’s Remix 08 conference in Brighton where he gave a keynote. The Mix and Remix conferences are design-focused events, part of Microsoft’s long-standing attempt to reshape its Windows and Web clients as a more designer-friendly platform, based on .NET and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Buxton is a well-known designer who joined Microsoft nearly two years ago. His theme is that design is critical to every aspect of computing. He talks about Apple and why the iPod succeeded. "When Steve Jobs was asked how he would turn Apple round he answered with two words," says Buxton. "Industrial design."

Buxton joined Microsoft specifically because of its design failings. "When I joined I’d had recruitment offers from most of the usual suspects. But if you want to be a doctor why would you go to a health spa? Go to a place where you can practice medicine and bring about the change. I’m a child of the sixties, I want to change the world."

What’s his assessment of Microsoft, in respect of the design of its products? Buxton is guarded. "It’s hard to talk about Microsoft in terms of a single company," he says. "With large products like Windows and Office, you’re dealing with such a lot of legacy, not just legacy code but legacy skills from users. With Office 2007, which I had nothing to do with, it was fascinating that the thing they tried to address was design and user interface issues. That’s never happened in Microsoft before.

Associated Link: Bill Buxton to change Microsoft from within, hug Steve Ballmer

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