DESIGN RESEARCH FOR MICROSOFT SURFACE

Analyzing how people interact with a new technology to inform business strategy

Challenge

Microsoft Incubation Research was testing a prototype version of the Surface touchscreen technology. While powerful, they did not know how people would want to interact with the technology in their homes. The first prototype was a touchscreen tabletop intended as a family game center.

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Action

As a part of a large interdisciplinary team, I analyzed thousands of images of people's homes, survey responses and observed their use of the technology in an onsite Microsoft usability lab. 

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Result

Partially as a result of our research, the tabletop form factor was revisited and Microsoft rolled the technology out through personal computers instead, resulting in over $1.3b in sales in 2017.