Design Lead
Overview
Beginning in the late summer of 2012 I led a team of 4 people through the development of Windows 8.1. By the summer of 2013 I had increased the size of my team to 6 people, plus an intern who accepted a full time offer with Windows Design at the end of his internship. My team was responsible for several core OS features including the Start page, personalization experience, search experience, learning features, and lock screen.
Management philosophy
As a lead, my goal was to build a happy and effective team and keep things running smoothly — ensuring that we communicated regularly with partners, did high quality design work, and delivered work on time. It was important to me to establish that my team had autonomy in their work while still making myself available to support and advise them as needed. In regular one-on-one meetings I provided targeted feedback on design work, delivered career feedback, and identified opportunities and activities to help them grow and achieve their long-term career goals. For example, coaching designers who habitually worked 12-hour work days on prioritization and time management techniques that got them out of the office at a reasonable hour and setting up aspiring leads as peer mentors of more junior designers as a way to learn about managing people. At review time I received exceptional feedback from my team that they had confidence in me as a lead and enjoyed working on my team.
Team design work
The Start page is the launcher for all of a user's apps in Windows. Live tiles on the Start page highlight information and updates from the apps that users care about most. Changes to the Start experience for Windows 8.1 included the addition of large and tiny tile templates for apps on the Start page, the ability to switch with a single swipe between apps pinned to the Start page and a view of all of your apps, as well as the ability to quickly sort and re-order apps.
The Windows 8.1 Start page
In Windows 8.1 users were given greater opportunities for personalizing their PC. The new color picker allowed users to choose from an increased set of colors and patterns for the system UI. The color picker is overlaid on the Start page which allows for instant previews of the colors and patterns selected. In addition to system color customization, users can create a personalized photo slide show to display on their PC's lock screen.
Customizing the color of your Windows 8.1 PC
The Search experience for Windows 8.1 was expanded to include not just results from your file system, but also data from the apps on your PC, files stored on SkyDrive, and information about people, places and things from the web. Search results are displayed in a beautiful, curated layout that highlights relevant information, links, and images.
Windows 8.1 search results for Marilyn Monroe
The new learning features in Windows 8.1 ensure that people new to Windows won't get stuck. Learn more about the learning features here.
Home page of the Windows 8.1 Help+Tips app