to celebrate the general availability of windows 11 i have the team that designed and built windows 11 joining us today and i’m really excited to introduce you to our two guests we have christina cohen she works as a principal creative director at microsoft on windows 11 and i also have sheath all agarwal she works as a principal design research manager christina and sheath all thank you so much for joining thanks for having us we’re excited so before we jump in i was wondering could you tell my audience what does a creative director even do what is a design research manager what do those roles entail uh being a principal design research manager uh for windows means i get to lead a group of um fantastic researchers whose job it is to understand the behaviors attitudes and practices of the people we’re designing with and for what creative direction of the product is about what mine team does is more about looking across the entire product understanding the look and the feel that we want to come from the product the emotions that we want our customers to feel when they’re using the product uh one question is a lot of people now you know now that windows 11 is available you can start upgrading your pc if you buy a new pc it’ll come with windows 11. what can people expect when they launch windows 11 for the first time first and foremost you’ll see something that’s not completely different you’ll see something that’s familiar that’s not something that’s going to surprise you right it’s going to feel like the windows that you’ve always used that you know and love but it’s going to have just that refresh look and feel it’s going to you’re going to see just little details like the motion and the icons the way um you know the new centered start menu feels compared to the start menu previously which was left aligned um things are going to be feel softer we’ve gone through and we’ve rounded corners things aren’t as sharp as they used to be and all those little details add up and you’re going to see our new bloom wallpaper as well that’s going to be one of the first things you see it’s a centered motif behind the start menu that it’s it’s beautiful it’s iconic and we think that it represents um everything that windows 11 is about that makes sense and with all these changes all these new features all these details uh what would you say are the two to three most compelling new features in windows 11 and i i know it’s so much coming out there’s so much greatness but if you just had to pick two to three what would those be my favorite features the refresh look and feel and you’re just gonna you know um you’re gonna see a windows that is more cohesive with windows 11 we’ve made a huge effort to actually go in find those surfaces that might still look like windows 7 might still look like windows xp and we’ve gone through and we’ve made a cohesive fluent design language for the entire system that actually helps the system that actually helps the operating system be a lot easier to use no i i remember always especially on windows 10 you go back into say the control panel and you know within a few clicks you end up in some like you know windows 95 looking interface so yeah that’s a big one right there and i’d say my second favorite feature is probably the widgets i’m really excited about the widgets um at a glance um you can just pull over a panel you can see more information from the widgets that matter most to you can look at news you can take a break from your day and check out what’s going on in the world um i love the widgets like to do and calendar because i personally am just you know every day i’m like okay what am i what am i doing today you know i want to see that at a glance right without having to open a calendar app or open an app and so you’ve mentioned kind of all these new things coming up like you know you have the widgets you have this new design and this might be something you’ve encountered before but uh say with your parents i’m not sure what version of windows they’re running but are you going to make a pitch to them to upgrade to windows 11 and if so how are you going to sell it to them yeah no i love this because this is like literally conversations that are happening with my family these days so the ux and the ui has become so much more seamless like there’s it’s fewer steps to get to where you want to be like take the settings experience for example we’ve super simplified that there’s been a ton of research that’s gone into this and to be perfectly honest settings is something that for 10 years we have been trying to figure out how do we address this like consistent detractor frankly for the windows experience um it’s that kind of stuff that i’m also talking to my parents about right like um of course like there’s some burdensome feelings that can come along with any os and just these smoother paths to getting to exactly where you want to be uh quickly in an intuitive way she thought that makes a lot of sense and uh i’m going to use that same technique to convince my parents to upgrade because i think any time i get on the phone with my my mom and i try to troubleshoot issues on the computer if you have fewer steps that’s that’s all the better uh one thing is there there’s all this kind of design change there’s a whole new look and feel the start menu is in the center now what was the inspiration for the design and kind of what led you down this path there are a lot of different signals that played into you know the new design language um first and foremost i think our listening to our customers you know chieftail knows this very well being our user research lead um just constantly listening to customers you know what their needs are what they’re looking for in their in their um operating system um you know and i think you know people use pcs differently today than they did six years ago when we came out with windows 10 right the centered start menu works really well across form factors it works great for touch right i think when you designed that left-align start menu years and years ago you know there were not nearly as many form factors in the market we were primarily mouse and keyboard um so there were definitely signals like that um and then you know the design language evolved so when we came out with windows 10 the company was still using the metro design language and the metro design language was inspired by minimalist design it was super simple inspired by magazines you know kind of content over chrome which was great at the time but what we learned over the last you know six years since we’ve launched that is that the design system was a little bit too stripped back um you know icons were all the same color reversed out of life tiles and so when you’re scanning and searching for something it’s hard when everything looks exactly the same and so um part of windows 11 was actually moving from the metro design language to the fluent design language that you know allowed us to have more color it allowed us to have depth and light in this different kind of or this additional z space that was more familiar with customers because it’s more like what you would experience in the physical world right a lot of my subscribers and a lot of my audience asked the question you know there are all these new features that show up in windows 11. but how does microsoft identify which features to actually build you know you probably have this massive list of you know thousands and thousands of requests but how do you narrow that down to these are the things that we’re going to include in the final release yeah yeah that’s a it’s a great question and of course there’s multiple factors that will come into that um but one of the most uh you know critical components is again going back to customer signal it’s going to be about recognizing where is it that we can provide the most customer value at the end of the day and so um for example like if you take something like uh snap groups you know we continue to make sure that we’re investing energy there because we heard so much feedback around the beauty of having like a simple way to focus your your work be able to move across different surfaces that you might be pulling from whether it’s the web and your word document or your powerpoint or whatever um being able to uh hear directly from the customers helped us understand truly like you know there’s there’s a uh value and a proposition here that we weren’t necessarily acting on yet windows 11 has been available to insiders uh for some time now and i think it’s been a few months actually and so a lot of feedback is already coming in i think the press has you know had a lot of feedback there’s a lot of feedback on social media uh could you let me know what type of feedback have you been hearing so far from customers we’ve been hearing a lot again about that feeling of like there is a feeling like i’m in a new space we’ve done things differently that center align moment has popped for people um there has also been a great feedback you know just about feeling that we’ve started to evolve the windows experience that we’re not just sticking to you know what was and and added a new number on top of it but we are showing signs of that evolution that that um we’re hoping are are uh being enacted on i guess so um i think that we’ve been hearing you know we’ve been hearing some really great feedback as well as already these opportunities for the team to be taking in and think about like hey how can we make this better what is it that we need to do either to clear like learning and teaching gaps or is it you know just about taking it back into the labs and thinking about uh the usability elements of it and she thought one follow-on question to that so as more and more people start upgrading to windows 11 and they start using it um undoubtedly people are going to have feedback we’re like oh you know i wish this was there i wish that did you know that feature did this type of functionality but how do people go about submitting feedback if uh if they have thoughts like that that they want the team to hear yeah okay so again we are listening in all the channels right so we are what when you’re posting into the social media world know that that we’re paying attention there um you can obviously you can get signed up for the windows insider program as well which is a really great way to kind of get connected the feedback hub is also a great way to send us notes you know what you’re thinking give us feedback um an easy way to get to the feedback hub in windows 11 is to use the windows key plus f um and it’s super easy to use just let us know how you’re feeling awesome and and christina and she thought thanks for thanks for letting us know kind of how to submit feedback and and that you’re listening to the feedback and i’m sure there’s a lot of feedback coming in uh with you personally are there are there any design inconsistencies or there any features that you wish made it in the product like do any of these keep you up at night um any of them top of mind for you absolutely there’s there’s a lot that keeps me up at night from [Laughter] yeah i mean there’s still you know windows 11 is a journey um like i was saying earlier you know windows is a product it’s decades old you’ve got surfaces in there that are from windows 95 from windows xp right and so going back and cleaning all that up and making one cohesive design language for our customers is a lot of work and we’re still on a journey we’ve done a lot with windows 11 you’ll see so much goodness in this first release of windows 11 but we’re going to continue on the journey of course there is always more we want to be doing that we know that there is so much great opportunity again building a brand new os feels wide open right and so i think just understanding to me i like have those moments of like patience because i know what’s coming like i see this road map of two and three and five years out and i know we’re gonna keep you know building and we’ll be iterating there’s gonna be so much iteration um as we start to unroll windows 11 out into the you know general population over the next few months like it’s it’s coming mostly in this place of like okay let’s get the feedback so we know what it is that we want to go um you know double down on going forward one other question that my audience has and this is you know people sit they see this announcement about windows 11 but i think one kind of thought that’s top of mind for a lot of people is how do you actually build an operating system like windows 11 uh you obviously have many steps you have you know the envisioning then you have the design then you go down to the coding but could you shed some light on what that whole kind of process even looks like to build an os absolutely yeah i think it’s important to keep in mind that the um the process is not linear right like uh you know uh windows is a living breathing product that’s constantly changing we’re constantly listening to customers and we’re constantly working across the company to you know change our plan and change our process right and so it’s more of an agile development process where it’s not one thing after another um just to give a little bit of insight into you know some of how we one thing that my team does is we will create a video for the upcoming release right where we’re we’ll work across the different um product teams we’ll understand the different product areas we’ll go talk to you know one team that’s working on widgets and other might be working on teams integration and chat right and we’ll understand those areas and we’ll put together a video that actually sets the direction and helps the organization understand where we’re going with windows and so having that video um is a really great way for us to do envisioning work and then from there you know we’re constantly listening to shethel’s team and the user research team and hearing the customer feedback and understanding and so um i think just keeping in mind that it’s you know we’re in a world now where windows doesn’t ship in a box like it did in the past right we used to have these like two year product cycles right where you know we have this date that we’re working towards we’ve got two years you know people are gonna go buy this box off the shelf right and it’s different now where you know we’re constantly changing we can constantly make updates and so um so with windows 11 obviously this massive investment for microsoft it’s going to change computing for so many people how do you look at that and then evaluate was it successful yeah i mean i think that they’re fundamentally this is going to be about are the people who are using windows 11 able to accomplish the things they came here to do they use our system to get their work done to coordinate their family activities to um you know be productive or or complete the tasks that they they’ve identified right we call those jobs to be done um ultimately it’s going to be about did we create that experience in a way that again goes back right up into those design principles was it done in a way that felt seamless to them and they felt that they were able to focus the right attention um that they didn’t have to spend a bunch of time learning new things because there was still that element of they knew where to go the familiarity moments in there now that makes a lot of sense and uh just one last question today and one thing i did is i asked my audience hey what questions you have for the team and one that seemed to pop up again and again and something you also just read about in the press a lot microsoft famously i guess a few years ago said oh windows 10 is going to be the last version of windows and there’ll just be updates over time and here now we have windows 11. uh could you talk briefly about what was some of the rationale or justification for coming out with a completely new kind of number version number for windows yeah so you know i think when that comment was made it was a comment around just the nature of technology today where you know an operating system does not ship in a box anymore right like it is a living breathing thing that we are constantly iterating on constantly updating right um and so i think that’s where the comment originally came from which is still true um but with windows 11 i think we just we made so many big leaps in the in the in the product right it wasn’t these tiny incremental changes it was actually a fundamental shift in you know how we were designing windows and so um we felt that that needed a new number a new brand right the logo changed even right for windows 11 and so um so yeah it was this moment where we were like computing has changed so much in the last six years we need to make a bigger jump here we need to signal to our customers that this is a new and different and modern operating system right and so by doing that it just helps to reinforce just the big changes that we made in windows 11. all right well uh and christina thank you so much for joining today and sharing your thoughts on windows 11 i know i’m excited about uh starting to play around with windows 11 my audience is very excited uh and and we’re all looking forward to i guess getting the upgrade or buying the new machine that has windows 11 on it so thanks again for taking the time to join today thank you so much this was super fun and we’re excited to hear from you and others listening absolutely and if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing and i’ll see you next time [Music]