Microsoft Design Week 2022: A Comprehensive Guide of What’s What for Microsoft Design Week

As 2022 winds down, we’re excited to end the year with some special news. For the first time ever, we’ll share a selection of curated talks from Microsoft Design Week! As our largest internal design gathering, this 3-day event is a grassroots effort that brings together our 6,000+ person design community to share inspiration, learnings, updates, and ideas across design-related disciplines. It’s also time for one heck of a celebration.

This year, our Design Week theme is Connection. As we emerge from an era of isolation and uncertainty, we’ve found ourselves craving deeper connections and more meaningful relationships personally and professionally (let’s face it, pets are great for companionship, but terrible FigJam collaborators). The desire for connection also underlies the evolution of Design Week from a single, in-person day at our Redmond, WA headquarters, to a hybrid global event with locally organized watch parties and networking events stretching from Mexico to India to Israel.

In thinking about what talks to externally share, we chose the following to represent the breadth and scope of our speaker lineup of designers here at Microsoft. We hope you enjoy these and would love to learn what topics or workshops you’d find particularly interesting for future Design Weeks. After all, these large events take a community, and that includes you. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Full playlist: https://msft.it/6005epMxz

1. Designing Signature Experiences across Hardware and Software

Best for: Industrial and UX designers

A presentation from our Surface and Windows design team discussing delivering experiences across hardware and software, key learnings, and rationale.

2. Fluent Design System Naming Process

Best for: Folks interested in design systems, nomenclature, and content design

In this session, you’ll discover how Microsoft identified and named offerings within Fluent Design System in a meaningful and straightforward way for users and contributors. While this was just our process for the Fluent system, these guidelines help system thinkers across industries demonstrate how to best organize design system components.

3. The New Cognitive Model for Inclusive Design

Best for: Inclusive design enthusiasts and those who recognize the power of a neurodiverse population.

The Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit has been used by thousands of product creators and educators all over the world. Now, we’re introducing plans to extend the toolkit to recognize cognitive exclusion and design for neurodiversity. In this session get a behind the scenes look at what we’ve been working on.

4. Regenerative Design: Learning from Nature Through Biomimicry

Best for: Designers and product makers interested in sustainable design and innovative sustainable methods of thinking

As we strive to meet and even exceed our sustainability commitments, Microsoft is measuring, designing, and piloting regenerative solutions, like nature itself. Nature, in addition to being beautiful and efficient, is also generous by design. In this session, we’ll discuss leveraging the tools of biomimicry, so we can learn from nature’s intelligence to create products, systems, and designs that support both human and more-than-human life.