anniversary

Today is my one-year anniversary with Microsoft. I hadn't ever considered working for Microsoft, but here I am, and I really do like it. (And no, I'm not just saying this because my manager could remember that I have this blog and read this.)

Looking back on the past year, what really surprises me is how much I've learned. I've spent most of my first year soaking up knowledge. I've spent a lot of time with our planning team to learn more about our users. I've travelled around the US to meet users, find out what they're doing, learn what they've learned as they have used our products. I've read reports from old usability tests and field studies to catch up on what we've already found out. I've spent countless hours in the usability lab conducting new research to discover how our users are going to react to the new features that we have coming in Magnesium.

So what's next for me? I'm transitioning from soaking up knowledge to sharing my knowledge with others. Conveniently, this is happening at the same time that I'm starting to transition from working on Magnesium to working on the next version. I'll still be spending a fair amount of time in the usability lab with Magnesium, of course. But there are some things that I want to think about for the next version: how do I make usability a more integral part of our process? what opportunities are available to MacBU going forward? what are we doing right? what aren't we doing right?

So: happy anniversary to me. :)