123599 Windows Insider Podcast EP45 Sheetal Agarwal Hanna

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

Windows Insider podcast -- Episode 45 – Designing for a Billion Jason Howard (host), Sheetal Agarwal, Principal Design Research Lead (guest) Hanna McLaughlin, Senior Design Lead (guest)

[Music]

JASON HOWARD: Welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast, where leaders from Microsoft and Windows Insiders discuss tech trends, careers, and innovation. I'm your host, Jason Howard.

This is Episode 45, Designing for a Billion

But first, if you're not yet a Windows Insider, head over to our website, insider.windows.com and register for free. Insiders get access to upcoming Windows features before they're released to the public, plus exclusive opportunities to experience all Microsoft has to offer.

As we get started with this episode, take a moment to think about the concept of “a billion”. It’s a big number, but can we really conceptualize how big it is? One of the largest sports stadiums in the world holds approximately 130,000 people. It would take nearly 7,700 copies of that stadium to hold a billion people!

Keeping that in mind, how does one design an operating system that will be used on over a billion devices? Where should the design begin? What’s the right way to make it work? Who makes the decisions on what it should look like?

There’s a lot that goes into the decision-making process, especially with such a large visual rejuvenation across so much of the operating system! And with the first preview build of Windows 11 out the door to Windows Insiders, joining us today to talk about these changes are Sheetal Agarwal, Principal Design Research Lead and Hanna McLaughlin, Senior Design Lead.

Without further ado let’s jump right in!

[Music]

JASON HOWARD: Welcome to the podcast, Sheetal and Hanna. I appreciate you both making the time, especially given your hectic schedules. I really appreciate you coming here to share all sorts of goodness with the Windows Insider audience.

As we get started here, it would be great to do some quick introductions. So, I’ll ask that each of you take a moment to share a little bit about your role and what you do here at Microsoft. Sheetal, how about you go first.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Hi. I’m Sheetal Agarwal. And I am very lucky to lead the Windows User Research team. I work with a brilliant group of eight researchers whose whole job is to make sure that we are keeping customers at the center of our product-making in Windows. We do everything from running qualitative research to quantitative research, doing in-depth interviews, in-home studies, as well as large-scale surveys, concept validation – all that kind of work. Just regularly bringing in customer insights into our processes. And we also work with our design and engineer partners connecting them with customers just to make sure that we’re driving empathy so that as we’re all building Windows together, we are centering ourselves in the realities of the people we are building with and for.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

JASON HOWARD: Excellent. Hanna?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: I’m Hanna McLaughlin. I have the privilege of being a designer on the Windows team. There are six design teams, a creative direction team, and Sheetal’s fabulous UR team. We all get to work together to create intuitive and beautiful experiences for more than a billion customers. It’s such a privilege.

I lead an amazing team of designers that works on how Windows experiences can tailor to specific audiences, form factors, and workflows. And I’m excited to share some of that work today.

JASON HOWARD: Well, I will say, once again, I really appreciate both of you making the time. Obviously, the podcast goes live after we’ve recorded, that’s always how this works, of course, and today – the day that we’re recording – just happens to be the day that we’ve done the big announce for Windows 11. Super excited, finally get to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. It’s been a long time coming. A whole lot of work has gone into this. Obviously, we’ll spend some time talking today about these very things.

You’ve both done introductions, talked about the teams that you worked on, but I would love to take a moment and dig a little more deeply into the respective areas of discipline. We’ve kind of hinted around it kind of through some of the Insider stuff in the past. We did have a webcast that talked about some of the user research things that we’ve done in relation to the broader CustomerUp efforts that we’ve had in place for the Insider Program, but I would love to hear more about what these disciplines encompass, especially about the overall scope of the design team and the user research teams.

So, Hanna, could you start us off?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: Yeah, happy to. So, from a design perspective our goal is to really envision and then create seamless, elegant, and impactful design solutions. There are many phases to the design process, so we work from conceptualizing initial ideas all the way through crafting detailed product roadmaps and even implementing with developers. And of course, each of these phases is really collaborative with partners across user research like Sheetal at both the beginning and the the initial exploration and validation stages, understanding user needs, marketing teams, PM teams, engineering, and even more. So, there are many phases, many partners, and then even within design, there are many roles and expertise that are captured under this umbrella of design.

So, we have motion designers, visual system designers, user experience designers, design developers, prototypers many more. And over the course of a product lifecycle, we always are leaning on each other and each other’s superpowers to bring the product to life and to be making these incremental decisions along the way. And so, it’s always amazing to reflect on what a balanced and powerful design team and research team our leadership has built.

The tasks in a day are really varied and vary greatly depending on what phase of the product we’re in. But the things that remain constant are things like collaboration, supportive of each other, and kind of like an iterative process all with the goal of, simplifying the complex and delivering these intuitive experiences.

JASON HOWARD: Wow, I might have to change careers here. That sounds super fun. (Laughter.) Sheetal, same question to you, please.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Yeah, so, as Hanna said, user research and design are two human-centered disciplines. And the specific kind of view and perspective that researchers bring to that is really as behavioral scientists. So, we play this critical role of really developing an understanding of human behaviors and practices, not just from here and there interactions, but we can apply rigor and method to that to really help unpack needs and wants, pain points that customers may feel in a given experience and we do that using our different toolkits with the methodologies I mentioned earlier – qualitative and quantitative.

Importantly, we work closely with design and engineering partners to actually bring those insights that we develop into the product-making process. So, we really try to activate our learnings by working side by side with our design and engineering partners, really across the whole product cycle. And what I mean by that is if you think about the beginning stages of product development, there is this opportunity – often, you can go into product-making with a lot of assumptions about what we need to build and what needs are out there for the customers.

But rather than basing that on assumptions, we should go learn and understand, what are these problem spaces our customers are having? So, we do a lot of generative research to address that question of what are the problems to solve and what are the right things to build for?

Generative research helps us answer those kinds of questions. We often come up, work with designers, come up with some concepts that once we’ve identified a set of problems, hey, maybe these are some solutions to it. We go out and do some concept testing and validation, learning, again, directly from customers, not trying to ground it in what we think they want, but hearing and learning from them directly.

And then – and then we move into the second part of the cycle. So, let’s say we’ve landed something. We’ve started to get clarity or signal that, hey, yeah, this thing that we’ve conceptualized here is – has value for the customer. Then, we move into the stages around, okay, now, let’s land the thing we’re designing. Let’s make sure that we’re building the thing right. And so that’s where we use a lot of evaluative research methods. That’s where we go after usability. Is this an easy experience? Is it easy to learn? Is it accessible? Are we creating delight for the customer? And so that’s just some of the ways that we kind of work across that product cycle, bringing things through, from the beginning through the end.

In fact, continuing – you know, we can continue and iterate ongoing almost endlessly, I suppose. (Laughter.) So –

JASON HOWARD: That’s the joy of Windows; it never ends.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: It never ends. (Laughter.)

JASON HOWARD: There were several things that you just said that immediately popped a question into my head and I want to dig into it because part of it I’m super curious, but I think the Insiders will find it fascinating. And really, it comes into the concept of designing. And it feels like it’s almost a chicken or the egg-type scenario of what came first? Is it we pick a design and then we ask users how they feel about it hey, did we get this right? Or is it more of a, we want to make some changes, but we ask users what they want and then we design around that? This isn’t my area of expertise, which is why I wanted to talk to y’all. So, where do you put the stake in the ground? Like, how do you get started?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: I can try to answer that, and Sheetal, I’m so excited to hear your answer. It’s such a great question, Jason. Windows has 35 years of history to learn from, and we’re also always looking to the future. Which means that there’s definitely both kind of chicken and egg opportunities.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

So, I’d say it’s a balance of what can we learn about behavior and sentiment today? And then balancing that with what are some of the unstated, unmet needs that we can address and help pave the way to move our experiences and customers into future ways of working?

And so Sheetal’s team is always amazing about finding creative ways to dig into current sentiment as well as unpacking core motivations behind unstated or unmet needs. And so, I think the answer to your question is a healthy balance of both and kind of knowing with the opportunity in front of us or what the problem is to solve which to leave into first and how to find that balance.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Yeah, I totally agree with Hanna here. I think it happens both ways. I think there are these moments of creative inspiration and there’s these moments where if you get a chance to spend time with Hanna and the other designers in the Windows team, sitting in the room while they kind of share these explorations it’s just kind of mind blowing, to be perfectly honest. Like, it’s just beautiful. It’s beautiful to see these brilliant minds that are working so hard to just create beautiful experiences.

And I think that there’s room for that and there’s those moments that that’s absolutely the way things work. We try things out and it’s worth putting it out there and testing and you can always come back and get feedback and iterate and all of that, but like, it doesn’t – it doesn’t always have to be one way or the other.

I will say that, of course, it is wonderful when you have that chance to ground yourself first in just some of that basic customer understanding, some of those you know, the foundations of understanding particular types of behaviors that you’re designing for and things like that.

And so, I hope a lot of folks are doing the kinds of things they’re doing, because they’re so conscious about reaching out. They reach out to the user researchers. They check in. They say “Hey, what do we already know?” What might help me ground a little bit here? And I think that that just, that that’s kind of when that stuff comes together most – I’m going to overuse this word, but beautifully. Like, it just kind of comes together when they put that at the center of their – their way of thinking about designing.

JASON HOWARD: So, we have both the chicken and the egg. It’s like having your cake and eating it, too. (Laughter.) Given the timing of this podcast, as I mentioned earlier, I’m just going to go ahead and jump straight to it and tackle the elephant in the room. Let’s talk about Windows 11. I am so excited. I cannot tell you how many times over the past – I don’t even know, it’s been years, honestly, at this point, where there was the was Windows 10 it? Are we just going to iterate on that forever? Are we going to call it Windows 10? Is it just going to drop the number? What’s going to end up happening? What’s the long-term roadmap?

And, of course, the Insiders are a curious bunch. They always want to know what’s coming next. And it’s been really hard keeping my mouth shut because it’s been so exciting. the Insider team, we’ve had to do quite an awkward dance to maybe allude to things without actually saying things and try to let people keep their excitement and not dampen it too much.

Anyway, I’m going off on one of my usual tangents here, so, focusing on Windows 11, now that we can talk about it. Some of the obvious changes. There’s the start menu, there’s the center task bar. Obviously, there’s rounded corners, there’s other things such as Widgets and the notification center changes. And there’s way more stuff than I can even sit here and list. I would have to literally have an entire document that’s pages upon pages to go through everything.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

So, without belaboring that point any longer, can we talk a little bit about some of the backstories. Maybe if you want to go into some of the individual changes, that’s great. But Windows 10 officially launched in July of 2015. I know that because I joined the Insiders Team back in 2014 when we created it and the Insider Program spun up, so it’s like very near and dear to me.

And so here we are almost six years later and finally we’ve got this next rev of Windows. There’s been a lot of changes across those six years, don’t get me wrong, but so here we are. So, why? Why was this the right moment in time? What was the impetus behind all of this?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: This is such an exciting moment, as you mentioned, it nearly feels like scandalous to talk about it out loud, actually. Like, you know. (Laughter.) It’s been such an under-wraps secret for so long.

So, it’s so much fun to reflect on it. And I think we just took this moment to be able to say we have – Windows 10 is a really powerful, loved, familiar, great experience today with more than a billion people. And there’s so much to honor in that. And we also have this wonderful moment in time to think about what else could Windows be and what more could it be? And we wanted to make sure that Windows continued to be approachable, easy to use, friendly to new customers, while also remaining familiar to customers who’ve already been with us for 35 years, like we were just talking about.

And so, this has been such a great moment to think – to kind of seize this opportunity, figure out how we’re going to continue to welcome back our existing customers into what’s familiar and natural, and also invite in the new with more calm and focused experiences, kind of leaning into that notion that Windows is for everyone. It’s beautiful, it’s clean, it’s simple. And this is a place you can create and be productive.

And so, it’s just been such a wonderful moment to take and kind of stick on that iterative process, but really kind of push forward and figure out how we can continue to help, because that’s really what we do as product makers, right, is support people on their mission and help those that are with us moving forward and kind of bring more people into everything that we have to offer.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Beautifully said. I don’t know that I have much more that I could add to that, Hanna. But I guess maybe from the user research perspective I think that with Windows 10, there’s so much goodness there. We also know that there are some things that we can keep doing better.

And one of the places that I feel like really emerged for us over the last few years has just been around things like that feeling of there’s just a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of – that feeling of a little bit of you know, clutter, that kind of stuff that we want to help, it really affects how people feel about going to their work. When you’re using this computer, you’re using this whatever device it is that you’re using, you kind of want to have that fresh feeling, that feeling like I’m going into a space that I have the room to think and do the things that I need to get done easily, quickly, efficiently, all those things come up.

And so, I think that’s just been a part of that journey along the way, recognizing hey, we have some room here to grow and we have some opportunities to think a little differently than we have. And I am just so excited. I think that this moment is one that, yeah, it’s a hallmark moment for Windows, it’s a hallmark moment for Microsoft, really, to just think about the new and exciting trajectory we can be on with the Windows 11.

JASON HOWARD: Both of you brought up a couple very distinct and very key points about the distinctness of the way previous editions of Windows have looked like the square edges and things that I can’t even begin to go into everything.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

But when you take a look at some of the work that was done in 11 compared to 10 or of course you go back further in time, I mean, if you want to go all the way back and look at XP or 95 or anything, everything was super boxy, the color palettes were – I’ll just call it bland. It was very distinct, and everything was focused on the productivity aspect.

But there’s nothing that says you can’t have a beautiful operating system while maintaining the things that let you be productive and accomplishing the goals that you have, for which you are using Windows as a tool to go do them. You can still do your job. You can still go in and design. You can still surf the web and play games and all this kind of stuff, but you don’t have to be confined by gray outlines, squared edges, and a command line window.

Windows has turned into so much more than that. And it feels like Windows 11 is this giant evolutionary step forward, where you’re going to maintain the ability to do all of these things that are super important to users, but do so with – dare I call it a touch of class on top?

And that’s not to slight any of the work that’s come from previous generations, but there’s just this soft, gentle touch that looks just so much different and everything is just so smooth and there’s just this visual appeal that Windows 11 has that Windows didn’t necessarily always have in the past.

And of course you know, I hinted at kind of when we jumped down this particular path there’s all the individual features that have taken advantage of some of these changes you know, I mentioned the start menu and taskbar and things like that.

So, Hanna, off the design side, hopefully I’m not putting you too much on the spot here, are there any specific features that I could get you to touch on a little bit about some of the design and kind of what went into it and things of that nature?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: It’s such a fun question and it’s so hard to narrow because there are so many amazing features. And even as you describe the visual language alone can be unpacked for an hour. And shout out to that amazing design effectiveness team who just belabored everything you just described, Jason, and just made everything have that soft, round, touchable, approachable expression.

If I were to reflect on all of the amazing features, I think I would focus on experiences related to multitasking, because that’s an area that my team and I have gone really deep on. And so, I think there are two experiences within that that I would kind of love to unpack. One is around snapping. So today on Windows 10, snapping is a really beloved feature – for those who discover it. And that was such a great place for us to start. I’m hey, this has value and not everybody knows about it.

And so, we initially started with that kind of simple prompt of discovery and ease of use. And so snap configurations on the fly took hold of you know, we – are there more powerful configurations? What about tailored to specific screen sizes? What’s the path that someone goes on when they’re kind of creating these tasks and caption controls and window – that’s where windowing happens and so how do we meet the user on that path? How do you manage your windows?

So, that was sort of like the initial path that we went – that iterative process that we went on as we built towards that value.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

And then the really powerful insight came through as we were doing observing and thinking through workflows. It’s that setting up the group and that first initial snap, that’s the action that you take, but the value is that group together. And that moment of interruption when, okay, let’s say you have your e-mail next to the Word doc you’re working on, and then suddenly you have to go reference a PowerPoint, and now it’s time to come back and you have to re-grab each one of those windows into that layout. And that question of wait a minute? How can we make returning to that thing I just created more seamless? And that’s how snap groups came to be on the taskbar through extended UI, et cetera.

So, just kind of sharing that evolution of we have value today on Windows 10 for multitasking. How do we build on that? And then those critical insights and moments of wait a minute, is it really the work that we all do putting into these snap groups that’s the value? No, the payoff is this unit and how do we continue to honor this unit and the operating system? Do I have time for one more? Can I do one more in the multitasking area?

JASON HOWARD: Of course.

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: Because it’s kind of similar and related of – actually, it might not seem as obvious, but you know, the widgets experience with all of that great, glanceable information, swipe in from the left or your task bar this is a great – an amazing new feature of glanceable information that I care about at my fingertips. And I no longer need to pick up my phone, for example.

And so, we did a ton of learning about with Sheetal’s team about what are the widgets that people are looking for and asking for? What’s the best indication model and interaction model, et cetera? But again, one of the strongest insights actually came from asking people hey, why on Windows versus on your phone? And really, actually, understanding the reason to consume this type of content on Windows was that, again, the power of multitasking.

Hey, I can look at this, I can glance at this between tasks or en route to, et cetera, and that’s where we kind of landed on that interaction model where you can have the half pane or extend to the full pane, whether you want that side by side versus immersive. And so, anyway, I bring up those two seemingly unrelated experiences that I think hint at that superpower of Windows of multitasking, but like trying to take the complexity of what it is to do a bunch of things at one time and simplify it in a way that lets you get to the thing that you desire in that moment, whether it’s glanceable, snackable information or like quickly returning to a unit that I used together. So, anyway, I think those are the two that come to mind right now, but I could, again, go on and on about so many more. (Laughter.)

JASON HOWARD: I want to put an underline on one of the things that you said, if I may, for just a moment. And it’s in relation to attention. It’s one of the things – there’s books being written on this, the concept of social media – it has exacerbated this problem over the course of time. Fighting for somebody’s attention is the thing that brings us away from whatever’s important to us, whether it’s my dog barking in the background and I’m what? And it just takes that one moment to break my attention on whatever I was focused on.

And you mentioned between like snapping windows and having to switch to something else and then coming back and trying to get back into your workflow again. It sounds like that was some of the reason for even creating the experience was I need to shift away my boss pinged me and I need to go look at this Word document to reference something, but I was in the middle of building this Excel document and writing formulas and I had this other thing snapped side by side. And all of a sudden, I’ve got to click and minimize and maximize and you’re kind of scattered all over the place, instead of just being able to return to what you were doing.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

Yes, my attention is being drawn away for a moment. I need to go do something. How do I get back to that same exact place that I was, that will help put me in the same mental state, so I don’t forget what I was doing? Because the number of times I’ve been sidetracked by a Teams chat or a call that comes in, and then I stop when it’s done and I’m “Wait, what?” It’s happened more times this week than I care to admit where I’ll be responding to something and I come back four hours later and there’s a half-written e-mail sitting on my desktop and I’m oh, yeah, I got sidetracked.

I don’t want to sit here and belabor that point any longer, but I’m glad that this happened. And it’s good to know that things like that were taken into consideration because it’s actually going to have an impact. And maybe selfishly, for somebody like me, who ends up kind of scattered all across the day between social media and Teams and e-mail and being in Word documents writing specs and PowerPoint – just – if I have a way to kind of organize some of that stuff. Those attention-grabbing moments can really get distracting. I guess that’s the right way to say it.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: And, in fact, I think you’re also speaking a little there, Jason, to the reality of – and especially this past year. Like, the flow of life is – there’s just so much more blending happening across experiences, across contexts. And that’s something that we hear so much about from our users as well, how do you help people stay in the flow? Okay, you’re going to get disrupted from the flow. Get me back. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing with that snap experience, snap groups.

So, I just think there are so many cool back stories, to be perfectly honest. Like, the story of Windows 11 coming, especially this year, we have all experienced those moments of you know the way we collaborated, the way we talked to our – talked in one-on-ones or talked in large group meetings, presented just all of that shifted when we moved it into the screen sitting in front of us.

And I think that while this was definitely an area that we were interested in going after in Windows, the reality is 2020 helped push us into this and helped us say, hey, we really need to go figure out what can we do to make this global moment easier on people? And I think that the product teams we dove in and we’re hey, there are so many places to go with meetings. And, in fact, there’s these long lists of potential features and tools and things we could do to make the meeting experience and easier one.

But to be perfectly honest, the reality is you can’t get to everything. And so how do we help figure out what to go after? And I think that’s where the screen sharing experience kind of shows how when you go and you listen to customers, that story – that decision-making process gets so much easier.

Long, long list of features. We go out and we do kind of this four-stage study. It’s got – it’s got interviews, we’ve got qualitative, we’ve got quantitative ways of checking and evaluating and understanding. Like, what is it that’s really the pain point? Which – what should we go after? Which problem to solve, right, in the meeting experience.

And so, we start to get narrowed and we start to see that, hey, there’s something to that moment when you have to share your screen. And I think we’ve probably all been there at some point or another where you’re I’m going to click this button and I’m going to just hope that the right things are showing, and the wrong things aren’t. Like, you just – that desktop sharing experience can be – and, frankly, our users came back and said, “That’s stressful, I don’t like it.” I don’t like – just the idea of having to share my desktop is a lot.

And so, we unpacked this. We worked, again, with our design and our engineering partners and we started to think about we’re not going to go do all the things, we’re going to narrow our focus and we’re going to go after

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin the screen sharing. And I think that – what we learned is that hey, yeah, the need for something lightweight to help us quickly share content in video calls that builds right into how I’m already running these meetings, that is easily accessible. It’s not like from a whole wide array of tools I have to find it. You know, it’s things that on my taskbar or whatever, they’re there. And so, we started to develop these – clarity to focus our energy.

And I think that what you’re going to see in Windows 11 really is a reflection of that, that we were listening to the customers’ needs. We got clear on what it is and then we got to really invest energy on the right things, which was just so exciting. And so, that one just stands out to me because I think it’s just a good – it’s that tech story.

The other one I just really quickly want to touch on is settings. So, from user research, I will say this. We have had years maybe a decade’s worth of feedback that settings is hard. Settings is not delightful. Settings is a complicated experience. And folks at different stages of Windows have tried and sometimes we made little strides, but really, settings is – I don’t know how clear it is from the outside, but it’s unwieldy. It’s like hundreds of pages that live distinctly from each other and it’s not even the same people kind of creating them. It’s by experience.

And so, what we saw with settings was just a really fragmented experience and users felt it. And one of the ways that that shows up best is you can’t just pop around settings easily. There’s no – you have to go back to home every time. So, let’s say you turn on settings and you’re trying to configure your system. You first go to themes, and you turn on dark mode. And now you have to go back to home and now you want to go figure out, you know I want to set up my wallpaper or I want to figure out my notifications. You keep having to return to home. And just think about the steps that takes and the time and the energy that that takes.

Well, we had a researcher say, “Hey, we’ve got to look at this more holistically.” So, she did this great deep dive, look across all these verbatims, look at all of this information and said, “Look, these are some of the ways that we can help focus the experience and narrow it down.” Let’s create a left navigation pane where all of the settings live. And so now you’re not bopping around.

And the other thing I’ll say here is that the attention to detail and the beauty and the design of these settings in Windows 11 pause and spend time there. It speaks to the skills of the brilliant designers, the folks that were pixel-by-pixel, paying attention. It’s just beautiful. And, actually, maybe the place that you’re going to actually feel settings is great is how much less time you’re going to spend in there.

JASON HOWARD: Which is actually a good thing because the faster you can find and take care of what you need, it lets you put your attention back to what you wanted to be doing in the first place.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Exactly. And that’s a testament to the designers, researchers, and folks working on this.

JASON HOWARD: I promise I’m not trying to toot my own horn here to use a little colloquial phrase, but I didn’t come up with the idea of the window-sharing scenario that you discussed along the way, but I will say, I do get to take credit for this, I wrote the first spec for it. And I actually got to work with Dragana to do the user research studies.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Oh, that is fantastic.

JASON HOWARD: And, interestingly enough, before it went into any of the internal design tools that we use, I mocked it up in Paint. (Laughter.)

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

SHEETAL AGARWAL: I love this.

JASON HOWARD: I still have them. I saved the images, the creations that I put together. And interestingly enough, although the designer has changed roles and moved to a different team, still working in design, he thought enough of my paint drawings that he actually permanently saved them. So, they’re actually part of the historical record of that design process. (Laughter.)

SHEETAL AGARWAL: That’s beautiful. See, these are the back stories. And now, you’re part of the history of it. (Laughter.) That’s awesome.

JASON HOWARD: I’m sorry, it’s still ridiculous, though, come on. To think that something I first mapped out in Paint, and I will just say I’m tangenting here again, but this is what makes the podcast fun, is I tend to be very visual. And so, for me to go through and just kind of slop some stuff down in Paint. I’m like, here’s what’s in my head. I’m trying to visually represent this, of what I think a great customer experience would look like. And that’s, honestly, pretty hard to do with the limitations of Paint, rather than doing it in something that’s way more robust. You know, I won’t name them specifically, but there’s lots of creative software that exists across the world.

Yeah, my choice was what was directly at my fingertips within Windows, and I chose to build it in Paint. And so, I took some screen clips Win-shift-S of desktop stuff and so it was like I was mocking up originally out of Windows 10. And I was Windows 11 is going to look like what it looks like, but here’s the process of how I want things to work.

And so those original mocks are actually screen clips of Windows 10 completely refined in Paint, which I use the word “refined” very, very loosely. (Laughter.) There are going to be a lot of nostalgic stories about the change from Windows 10 to Windows 11, all the work that went into it, right, the conversation that we’re having, it’s the tip of the iceberg. There’s way, way more to come.

But given that this is the Windows Insider podcast, I do want to take a moment and focus on that audience. We had preview builds, we’ve had more preview builds, we’ve had different revisions where Windows 10 was once a year and then it went to twice a year here we are knocking on the door of Windows 11. And across the time there was the feedback app and the Insider Hub for the Insiders who are listening, there’s a throwback. It used to be two separate things.

Along the way, it was combined into just the feedback hub. Whether Insiders have shared their voice through the feedback hub, through user research sessions which we’ve talked a lot about, capturing verbatims and such off of social media or the answers forum or Reddit or anywhere else that we engage with Insiders, the Windows Insider the group, the community. The Windows Insider community, that’s the – probably the best way to say it. They play a key role in sharing those insights that help guide product direction.

So, as we continue forward into Windows 11, the Insider Program isn’t going anywhere. So, if – you know, if any of the Insiders out there had a question, don’t worry, we’re still here. I’m still employed and we’re still happy to take your feedback. Do each of your teams plan to continue down the same paths or similar paths? Are you planning any changes as we move forward with this release of Windows or what we have in place has it kind of been a good support model for getting some of those insights? I’m eager to hear what you might have to share in that space.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

SHEETAL AGARWAL: The feedback we receive from this community is absolutely invaluable. I think it just – it helps make Windows better. It keeps us honest. I love the candor with which we hear from folks, you know? And it’s not out of a negative place, because you want us to do better, and we want to do better. So, that is just incredibly important and absolutely will continue to be part of the way we iterate. We iterate quickly. We experiment. We want to bring things to you and get your insights, get your thoughts, get your feedback so that we can do our best to turn around and make it better and better.

And I think that going forward for Windows 11, absolutely, this community is going to be great. And I think the place that maybe we’ll be leaning in even more is just increasing kind of the community’s – Windows 10 – I think it’s 1.3 billion active devices.

And that is just mind blowing in terms of, obviously, just the breadth of people out there that are using our products to live their lives. The breadth there is amazing. And then I think also there is – how could you ever design for a billion people? We have to find ways to understand just different groups that represent different types of our users and our customers. Like, you can think about that in all different ways. You can think about that in terms of the folks that are really tech forward that want to go lean in and try the newest things and be part of that exciting iterative moment.

And then there’s the folks that come in a little bit later. And while I think that many of our Windows Insiders are probably in that more tech-forward space, you’re willing to go on the ride with us.

It would be great to find ways to just keep expanding so that we get a little bit more representation across some of those other groups. So, that’s just an area that I’ve been thinking about that I know some of our partners in the Data and Applied Science have been thinking about how do we grow this community even more just given the sheer amount of users we have, just developing more of that representation there.

So, but we – this group, this community, we’re so grateful for the engagement and the willingness, again, to just go along and help keep making our product better and better.

JASON HOWARD: Hanna was there anything you wanted to append there any insights that you have to share?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: Plus one to everything Sheetal said. She is our, you know listening guru listening to all the channels that we have to learn from.

I think the one thing I would add is I think we’ve talked a lot today about how we fold insights into the design process and the making process. You know, before we design, while we design, and you know, even after we release. And so, I think we typically think of the Insiders’ feedback and voice as that really amazing listening channel to hear about how people are responding to our product and experiences that they’re having.

So, that’s how I was initially think that of course, we need to know. But then I started picturing this flywheel in my head of the before, during, after feeds into the before aspect of this, too. And so, it’s the listening we hear from the Insiders are invaluable because it tells us how to do what we’ve done today a little better, but it also gives us clues and insights in how into like net new innovation that we want to go do and these like larger opportunities to grow.

And so, I just wanted to share that flywheel that I just sort of started picturing in my head today of the before, during, after, thinking of this group as the after-release feedback for refinement, but even more so to net-new inspiration. And so, I just wanted to, one, express appreciation, and then two, echo that sentiment of yes, please,

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin we are here merely to serve the people that use Windows. And so, please, we need to – we need to hear back, so thank you for the time and commitment.

JASON HOWARD: Oh, absolutely. We’re kind of winding down here. And this is where I would normally ask what’s next. Put some people on the spot. Some people are excited to talk about it, some things we can and can’t talk about, it just depends on who the guests are. But, I mean, we kind of let the cat out of the bag earlier today kind of with the entire world, really, it wasn’t even just internally.

As it stands right now, the future’s pretty much wide open. Yes, this first bit of Windows 11, the preview builds are going out. We’ve got all the excitement from the Insider audience; the world is seeing what we’ve been doing for the past – I don’t even know when the concept of Windows 11 originated. It was well over a year ago.

We’ve made this big announcement. Your teams are still hard at work. Is there anything that you would request from the Insider audience? Is there anything specific that you want to share with them or any words of encouragement?

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: I just wanted to express gratitude again for all of the rich feedback that has guided us to this momentous release. And I guess the thing I would say is I think I hope, and we hope that you see yourselves in this product because it was your voice that was a lot of the spark and impetus for some of these ideas. And just please keep sending feedback questions, we’re always listening. We care and we’re excited to continue to make Windows a great place for you.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Hanna, I think you just summed that up so well. Agreed, just full of gratitude. Very appreciative, and frankly know that the input that you’ve provided so far is how we got here as well. And so we just hope to keep growing on that. We’re listening. We are – if anything, we need you now more than ever. We’re launching a whole new OS. And it’s what a great time to get to be part of building it and being really – you as product makers, as – again, human-centered disciplines like we’re looking to you and I’m very excited to just be on the Windows 11 journey.

JASON HOWARD: Excellent. I know there’s a ton more to come. The first glimpse is out there, but we’re not done yet. I cannot wait to see what each of your teams comes up with next.

Between listening and having those engaging moments with customers to make sure that we’re on the right path or to course correct or to figure out what it is that they actually want. I mean, as a consumer, sometimes I don’t know what I want and somebody asking me a question will help give me some clarity, you know? And then, from the design perspective, I have a ton of respect for what you all are able to do. I am not the artist, as you know from my little Paint diatribe earlier. But you know, without the hard work from your team, Hanna, and all the other design teams, we wouldn’t have even the first rev of what’s coming out. We wouldn’t have what Windows 11 is and will continue to evolve into in the future.

So, on behalf of myself, on behalf of the Insider audience, thank you for all the hard work. I’m excited to see what’s coming next. And of course, a huge thank you to both of you for making the time to come hang out on the podcast today. It’s been a fascinating conversation. I’ve learned a lot. Just thank you. Thank you so very much.

SHEETAL AGARWAL: Thank you. I had a great time, too, so thanks for giving us a chance.

HANNA McLAUGHLIN: Thank you so much. Super fun to reflect on this – on this special day and the people that we do it for.

Windows Insider podcast EP45 – Designing for a Billion Guests: Sheetal Agarwal, Hanna McLaughlin

[Music]

JASON HOWARD: Both Hanna and Sheetal summed this episode up in the best way possible: Windows Insider and customer feedback over the development of Windows 10 has played an immense role in the development and design of Windows 11. Change can be exciting, and it can be daunting, but these changes are the result of listening to YOU and we’re proud of what we have to share.

The Windows 11 journey is just getting started and we’re happy you’re here alongside us. There’s much more to come and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Until next time!

NARRATION: The Windows Insider Podcast is hosted by Jason Howard and produced by Microsoft Production Studios and the Windows Insider team. Listen to our previous podcasts and visit us on the Web at insider.windows.com. Follow us at @WindowsInsider on Instagram and Twitter. Support for the Windows Insider podcast comes from Microsoft, empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Join us next month for another fascinating inside look into Microsoft, tech, innovations, careers, and the evolution of Windows.

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