Inclusive Design – Visual Design – UX/UI
Microsoft Design Week 2024
A comprehensive guide of what’s what for Microsoft Design Week
Once again, we’re inviting external audiences to preview a batch of curated talks from our largest internal design event. Here’s your guide on what’s what, the official playlist, and more.
By Microsoft Design
As we kick off 2024, we’re excited to announce we’ll once again be sharing a selection of curated talks from Microsoft Design Week. Microsoft Design Week is our largest internal gathering, a grassroots effort that brings all 6,000+ of us designers here at Microsoft together to share design thinking, learnings, discourse, and ideas across design-related disciplines.
This year, our Design Week theme is Co-evolution. Co-evolution, always present as nature‘s ultimate choreographer, guides us this year as we think about building products in a new technological era with, with accelerated development timelines, and amid a new world of work. It‘s a captivating narrative of life‘s continuous journey towards improvement and adaptation.
In thinking about what talks to externally share, we chose the following to represent the breadth and scope of our speaker lineup. While we can’t share everything, we hope you enjoy these and would love to learn what topics or workshops you’d find particularly interesting for future Design Weeks.
To view the talks either click on each image or watch the whole playlist here.
1. Designing=Humanizing?
Speaker: John Maeda, CVP Design + AI @Microsoft
Best for: All design and research disciplines
We’re not supposed to humanize AI. But if design is the force that humanizes technologies for broader adoption and appeal, does that mean we need to stop … designing?
2. How becoming a quadriplegic helped me deal with dyslexia and become a recognized innovator in design and accessibility
Speaker: Pete Denman, Senior Design Researcher @ Intel
Best for: Folks interested in inclusive and accessible design
Just out of high school in 1988, Pete Denman broke his neck in a diving accident leaving him a quadriplegic. With a terrible scholastic record and before the ADA was implemented, he reinvented himself, getting an education and becoming a leader in design, accessibility, and innovative technologies. Through a showcase of his design work, he will share his journey and spark a candid discussion on how universal design is changing. Namely, how can we design and build for the accessibility needs that we haven’t yet achieved in the ones that we haven’t yet discovered?
3. Inclusive design for mental health
Speakers: Ali Benter, Christina Mallon, Will Brennan, Amanda Poh, and Karina Dion
Best for: UX Designers
Join us for the launch of our approach to designing for mental health. Here we will give you all the tools including a guidebook, figma plug-in, design cards, and fluent integration so that you can easily create designs that consider mental health.
4. Behind the Brief
Speaker: Studio Tendril
Best for: Brand designers, visual designers, 3D enthusiasts
Great work starts with a brief. What makes a great brief? And what happens after the brief? Join one of our most esteemed creative partners – Tendril – on a journey behind the brief. The team behind some of the most memorable creative work from Microsoft will share best practices, cutting-edge work, and insights.
5. Sounds Great!
Speakers: Rosa Park & Nicolas Kasha
Best for: Audio designers, Conversational UX enthusiasts, UX Designers
Speech is a powerful and natural way to communicate. So, how do we design for voice? In this talk, we’ll guide you through the invisible world of voice design, covering both user interaction and system audio design. As we explore the potential of natural language capabilities, you’ll learn how to create engaging and intuitive voice experiences.
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