Microsoft
Xbox
Xbox was expanding its marketplace into TV and Video. Without the biggest names in streaming, the launch would mean nothing. YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix had to be there, and they had to be right. My team was brought in to set the experience standard and make those apps want to be there, and bring their best.
The tension we had to resolve: the platform needed to feel coherent across everything, but each app had qualities worth protecting.
YouTube was social, short-form, built to autoplay into the next video. Hulu had invested seriously in editorial quality, with dedicated curation of posters, thumbnails, and metadata at a time when most of the industry was still using text listings or blurry screencaps.
Flattening any of that in the name of consistency would have been the wrong trade.
The Hero App, Platform, and Guidelines teams came together several times a week to keep both true, learning from each other and from partner feedback in real time. We pushed the platform to make room for what mattered to each partner, protecting the signature experiences users came for.
The program went from concept to launch in under a year. Xbox platform revenue grew 48% in 2012. Hulu and YouTube were recognized as best-of-Xbox by critics.
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Tellme
Before Xbox, there was Tellme. I joined the team that designed voice interaction for mobile phones at a time when the category didn’t exist yet. The challenge wasn’t just the interaction model. It was convincing users, carriers, and the industry that speaking to a device was a natural act.
Getting that right required the same discipline as everything else: understand the person, work within the platform’s constraints, make the business case visible in the experience.
The work contributed to Microsoft’s acquisition of Tellme, one of the largest in the company’s history at the time, and set up the next chapter: launching the voice platform on Windows Phone and building Microsoft’s speech platform.
