• Who are the users?: Identified the need for and managed the production of a consumer e-mail (web and client) use segmentation. Factor Analysis of over 2000 responses to a closed-question online survey produced 4 factors, segments.  Site visits to people selected to fit the segmentation enabled the production of rich textual descriptions of the personas goals, motivations and needs.  The results were summarised into the MSN8 and Hotmail product persona representations.  The segmentations were used to make design development direction decisions  and integrated in the construction of MSN8 communications testing plans.
• Getting it right early in the design process: Worked closely with an interaction designer to produce a high fidelity visual prototype of the shared browsing experience for MSN Explorer V2 using the Rapid Iteration Test and Evaluate (RITE) process.   Set-up the timescales and decision making criteria, designed an ran the user-input sessions.  The final working prototype became the specification document and was built reducing the cost of code-based user-feedback prototype testing and refinements.
• Intelligent spam filtering: MSN8 mail spam filter behaviour was consistent with user mail-filtering expectations because I developed an innovative,  economic data collection program to enable Microsoft Research (MSR) developers to seed the original spam filter program with emails actually received and sorted by real users.
• quick, cheap, early assessments: Using cognitive walkthroughs of Windows Vista synchronisation core planned experiences enabled early identification of experience bugs against the conflict resolution dialog specifications.
• what do users think?: target product users participated in an on-line open card sort of actual and potential online conferencing service abilities. The results were visually represented in a proximity matrix and similarity tree as parts of  posters and PowerPoint slide-decks that summarised  the research to the product team.   The results were used to evaluate the products current information architecture and the likely user-impact of changes to that IA.  The results guided decisions about features resource allocations and detailed design decisions throughout the subsequent development cycle.

Lead User researcher on the Microsoft Unified Communications Group (UCG) experience team

Responsibilities included:

1. Defining my responsibilities and persuading the product management team the activities were appropriate to provide effective design development direction of the Office Live Meeting family of products and services.
2. Identifying users’ mental models of current and future possible online conferencing service abilities using a free card sort to evaluate the product’s complex Information Architecture.
3. Comparing online conferencing experiences, market competitors, experience innovators, Microsoft products and services.
4. Developing a UCG products and services score-carding,  experience tracking, process.
5. Establishing a data backed taxonomy of meeting types through initial case studies, contextual interviews, planning to field a survey that can be factor analysed to identify distinct meeting types.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 Demonstration (Web link)

User Experience Research Lead on Microsoft Windows Vista MSX experience initiatives.    

Responsibilities included:

1. Scoping the Mobile Knowledge workers experience with legacy Operating Systems identifying and prioritising experiences to target for improvement. The development of the defined experience crossed Microsoft divisional boundaries, for example between Windows Mobile Embedded Device and Windows divisions.
2. Collating and synthesizing knowledge distributed throughout the company, and filling gaps in our knowledge by contextual interviews with mobile knowledge workers, constructing and fielding large scale surveys of mobile knowledge workers.
3. Regular updating of the experience score-card though iterative usability lab studies run by myself on experiences including Wireless Networking,  ”Windows Meeting Space“, “Windows Mobile Device Center” and power management.  Often this involved influencing and leveraging the targetting input of colleagues throughout Microsoft, to ensure extensive iterative testing of core experiences,  formal benchmarking and effective running of Beta release longitudinal field trials on Windows Vista Tablet PCs.

Conference paper reviewer: Human Factors in Computing Systems 2006

Influential colleagues

• Hillel Cooperman
• Tjeerd Hoek
• John Pruitt
• Jonathan Grudin
• Gayna Williams

Microsoft USA MSN product teams covering communications experiences across multiple applications and product teams.

Responsibilities included:

1. Define and drive the communications experience for the new MSN Explorer client dedicated to providing novice internet users with a clean easy integrated experience.
2. Build the product teams’ in-depth understanding of consumers’ communicative practices by representing diverse data sources (observation, interviews, surveys) through Personas. 
3. Advise on how the identified target product user groups currently used services provided by Hotmail, MSN Messenger, and the likely users of  a new collaborative web browsing ability to scope whether and how to effectively integrate these services.

The communication personas were subsequently used to focus development of Microsoft’s diverse consumer communications services including Hotmail, Outlook Express 6.0, MSN8 Mail, MSN Messenger 4.5 and Windows Messenger V.4.

International conference workshop program organisation: Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2002

Patent example: Method and system for identifying message recipients

Influential colleagues

• Hillel Cooperman
• Tjeerd Hoek
• John Pruitt
• Jonathan Grudin
• Gayna Williams