Microsoft's Open Design
Over the years Microsoft has developed countless number of products from operating systems to individual products such as Microsoft Office. Traditionally products are developed by separate teams without thought of how the product would integrate with other products. This means that products are developed looking differently, even though they are created by the same company. Microsoft has started implementing “open design” that involves sharing ideas across the company and integrating products.
With Microsoft’s feet firmly planted in both the hardware and software market, they are in prime position to develop products that work in harmony with one another and go after businesses that have dominated their respective market. Through open design, the culture at Microsoft has changed on how the products teams are working more closely together.
According to The Verge, every Thursday the Microsoft’s Surface, Windows and app teams get together to discuss what they are working on. The meeting is attended by a dozen employees and represent products such as OneNote, One Drive and Microsoft Teams. These meetings are important for a company such as Microsoft to ensure their products have the same colour palette, illustrations and general tone. The meetings also help to ensure that the various teams are in harmony in terms of company’s design principles.
A big company, such as Microsoft, finds it difficult to keep their branding and products in harmony with one another during the design process in past years. However, Microsoft over recent years has started producing and developing products with the same design philosophy as one another. One move they made is to make Windows 10 and finally solidify their design philosophy, which provided a platform for their products team to use as a foundation when building their respective products. Unlike past times, Microsoft every so often would redevelop the operating system with a completely different look making it difficult for other product design teams to create products that would complement the operating system.
The implementation of open design is a perfect step for the company to continually keep their designs cohesive with past and future products. Hopefully, the open design philosophy enables the company to create outstanding products which adhere to the current design philosophy of the company.
Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/29/18515776/microsoft-design-open-fluent-prototypes-history