Microsoft hires designer behind "The Next Microsoft", Andrew Kim | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft hires designer behind "The Next Microsoft", Andrew Kim

minimallyminimal.com

233 pointsdbcooper83 comments

Poor kid. I bet he even believes he can make a difference. He's gonna get eaten up and spit out by the behemoth. In a few years he'll be as bitter and jaded as the rest of us.

http://www.bonkersworld.net/images/2011.06.27_organizational... When this image came out I saw it posted by over a dozen MS friends (in xbox no less) laughing/crying over how true it was.

Organizational chart metaphor is priceless.

This is supposedly an MS-produced parody of it's marketing efforts. It's very old now (I think it uses a 1st gen iPod?) but is still worth a laugh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

Thankfully MS have learnt a lot of lessons since.

Hah, as a designer I enjoyed that more than I was expecting... It does raise a lot of questions of methodology and bureaucracy.

The Microsoft you speak of is the one that existed a decade ago. It has changed significantly in recent years. Its the one leading the design with skeumorphic layouts. Has some of the coolest products out there. They may not be financial success, but very well designed.

Skeumorphic? I'm not sure the metro-UI tiles have any real-world counterpart.

EDIT: In fact, Andrew Kim himself makes the point for me: http://bit.ly/VfSQ7T

I guess you meant it the other way around: "Its the one leading the design with minimal layouts." E.g. Metro UI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph thats what Apple is famous for, e.g. with their calendar app.

A few days ago, a Microsoft employee who has worked on Windows 7 and 8 said on a Reddit AMA:

"There is no doubt that we have catching up to do. We even do funny ads acknowledging how bad we were: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD9FAOPBiDk "

They still know they're not perfect but they seem to think they're good enough already. I hope one day they learn to do things right.

Except that the ad is not funny but lame.

This: http://karaokewebstandard.org/ (from the video) is actually pretty funny.

I wonder if anyone has thought of starting a Github repo of a JS library that follows the pattern defined on the Karaoke Web Standards site? Could be a fun project. Using the plethora of HTML5 API's available, I wonder if you could get close to a working karaoke prototype using HTML5 audio and video API's?

i was at microsoft at the time, and i can confirm this was done inside microsoft by one of it's marketing teams.

i don't remember which team now, but it was shown at one of the company meetings.

Hey, he also believes that the moon is science fiction. It'll be good for him.

Can't speak for any of the others, but the Google chart is dead-on (at least, it was when I was there - the top three are Larry, Eric, then Sergey over there making flying cars or god knows what else).

Great designers can always make a difference.

As long as Ballmer is at the helm with minimal understanding of technology, design, and dev relations I concur that he'll just be a cog in the giant machine that's just been moving forward due to it's past momentum with deceleration.

Jaded? Yes, but possibly not in the way you think.

Compare:

"I know that many people were looking forward to seeing it so I’m sorry to say that it’ll have to be tucked away for now."

With another jaded designer:

http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple

I never understood how people can do work for a company then be upset that that work becomes to the company and not them.

The guy seems to be complaining that he can't show Apple's IP on his website? Come on.

I don't think he is complaining as much as sad.

No doubt Apple's patented everything he came up with from every possible angle and will use those patents to sue anyone that actually releases innovative UIs into the ground, too.

Is it just me or do they seem a lot like the new Microsoft?

I don't get why you're down on this they way you are. You're may be right in your assumptions or maybe he likes this kind of environment and will love it. Who knows.

The "moral" of the story though is the fact that he was proactive enough to do something with his spare time. He wanted to attract attention to his skills and it worked. I hear / read every day about computer science graduates who are still working at a dead end job. Maybe if they were proactive and designed something new or redesigned something old in their spare time (like many of us on HN do with our side/weekend projects), they would get more attention and a better job.

From my point of view, this will be a great learning experience for him. He may or may not like it, but bottom line is that he'll learn a lot about himself and will be a better professional for it.

I sure hope he can affect change. MS is a big company and Xbox does not affect Windows or Office.

Except that Metro thing...

All companies are screwed up in their own way. If they can reboot the good parts of the old culture (hacker oriented but where building a business and design has an equal seat at the table) at Microsoft, it has a serious chance to make a big comeback.

It's funny how many stories here on HN are about a little kid that succeeded in life with his little startup, how someone's will made a difference, etc.

And when some designer actually does some good work, gets noticed and a company actually does the right thing and hires him. And he is very happy about. Even then, the most upvoted comment here is from someone expecting the guy to be "bitter and jaded as the rest of us".

Truly HN can't be biased.

Designers often come up with such kinds of "unsolicited advice", hoping to get noticed by the big companies, and it's actually the first time I see someone succeeding in this approach (which is a good thing I guess).

What strikes me is that he will be working in the Xbox division, which I already consider Microsoft's most coherent and elegant division, marketing-wise.

Andrew Kim has come up with a branding concept, but I wish Microsoft would have also considered approaching the guy behind this Windows UI concept: http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui... Apart from the fact that it looks gorgeous, I believe it embraced the "flat design"concept in ways that Windows 8 has failed to elaborate.

That's basically a direct rip of the Zune desktop software [1] applied to other apps. Windows Phone distinctly reminds me of the Zune HD UI once you're past the live tiles home screen. If they wanted to do more like that, they would only need to turn to their own people that made it. While Zune failed as a product, its team seemingly inspired everything Microsoft's designed since.

1: http://i.imgur.com/gb2DhNt.jpg

I disagree completely. That looks like an old and dated website and still has loads of unflat.

The Zune software is from 7 years ago, and you can see every element of its design in that blog post (sans-serif typography as UI hierarchy, no title bars, flat minimize/maximize/close buttons, back arrows, neon color bars). It stuck out like a sore thumb against Windows XP and the recently released Windows Vista, yet fits right in with Windows 8 where the exact same elements are used throughout Metro.

It's cluttered, has lack of whitespace. Round buttons. Horrible grid. Flat does not mean undesigned.

You're missing the point. Whatever nitpicks you have with that design is irrelevant to his speculation that it's the precursor to Microsoft's current UI design language.

The problem with the design of Windows 8 is that "inspired by Zune" gave us a big pile of poop. The Win8 concept from the Verge is a much better application of Metro to Windows than what MS officially came up with.

"Designers often come up with such kinds of "unsolicited advice",hoping to get noticed by the big companies"

I think "often" is a bit of a stretch, in the last 10 years, I've seen maybe a half-dozen professional design demonstrations like MM. Design is hard work - and good designers are almost always employed at the company of their choice, and, if they aren't, can do design for several hundred dollars an hour. No need to get noticed.

What's amazing about MM, is that he's a Design Hacker - instead of writing code to scratch his intellectual and creative itch, he puts designs out there.

What you call unsolicited advice in fact is part of a process to make the world a better place. You see something wrong and right it. Tell the world about, and hope to make a dent I the universe. That's actually a very good way of inflicting change. Because even if you don't dent it, at least you're getting better in the process.

If a designer did an unofficial rebrand of pornhub and it was nice, we'd for sure hire him. Porn gets no love.

I'd imagine there's quite a bit of room for innovation from both a design and technical perspective in that space given the stigma around working in it.

indeed

I'm sure it gets plenty of love. Just not that kind...

Link to "The Next Microsoft": http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-micro...

And its HN comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195208

Bleh. Something inherently unappealing about rhomboids, especially when they're framing photographs.

Also, the dot on the 'i' is missing.

Thanks! I wonder why he didn't just link it in the blog article. Your comment should be more towards the top, I just had to spend a few minutes clicking around his site to get to that article.

To Mr.Minimal: The archive link only shows last month, so I had to hover the subtly-bolded numbers in the calendar box to be able to browse older titles and hope for the best ... I feel like I must have missed some completely obvious way to navigate your blog?

(edit: the above remark is intended as constructive criticism--I tried my best wording it as such, but reading it back, that maybe didn't quite come out right)

I thought the best part of his "The next Microsoft" was choice of font for the logo- it has a softness that fits the name perfectly but stands out boldly. I always felt MS' sharp, italicized font was inappropriate. Besides, any move away from italics is a good move, imo.

Old font: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e...

New font: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e...

Microsoft actually did update its logo recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft.svg

It's not italicized anymore but I prefer the old one, though Andrew's choice of font is nice as well.

For what it's worth, Microsoft has already changed the font of their logo recently:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/08/23...

I think that one thing that Microsoft shouldn't have touched was their wordmark. The symbol - sure, it was a PoS and needed to be replaced, but all these fragile sans-serifs in bleak "friendly" shades of gray really can't hold a candle to this -

http://i.imgur.com/Ctu9Aht.jpg

Whatever you want to say about Microsoft, they have a pretty solid recruiting pitch. The kid is in for a rude awakening once he starts there though.

It's funny how it's so plain to us.

Perhaps he realizes this and goes there not to save the world, but just for a free Xbox :)

Oh, so this is that marketing guy? I wasn't too impressed the first time around. I didn't think his changes would make that much of a difference or actually turn Windows 8 into a big success. When I first read this headline, I thought they hired that guy who remade how their desktop should actually look with the "Metro" design thinking, which was far better than what Microsoft has now. What they have now is basically the Windows 7 Basic theme. They didn't really metrofy anything in it. That's just one of the reasons why Windows 8 looks so incomplete and so disconnected from with its other parts.

Does he mean to say Apple has also approached him (products I like, fanboy)? That could be Google too, would make much more sense.

He interned a summer at Google, so it's quite possible that he had been approached by them.

Market a product whichever way you like. If the core engineering is flaky, the product will always be despised.

I disagree. Take Facebook, Twitter or Wordpress. All succeeded despite their original engineering - not because of it.

I've always thought Facebook has been awesome. In my experience of the web, they were one of the first websites I used daily that pushed that much ajax.. and I loved it.

What do you think is wrong with the xbox core engineering (the division he is going into), and why do you think it's despised? Or is this just blind MS hate?

The xbox hardware is notoriously flaky - both the console and the controllers break regularly and have to be replaced. Unlike the PC, it is not easy to open up and fix - you need a veritable constellation of star keys and various other tools and special training. If the xbox hardware was as robust as the casing there would be no problem at all.

Been following Andrew for years; this is great news.

For those of you who only know him for the Microsoft branding I highly recommend you read the rest of his blog. I think he's the most promising industrial designer of our generation; the next Ive/Rams.

I hope that he shows how to do design without skeumorphics.

Worst thing Steve Jobs ever gave us.

Andrew Kim was going to get hired by one of the big companies sooner or later. He's just so ridiculously talented that it had to happen eventualy.

I've been following Andrew Kim since 2010 (since his HTC Concept). Andrew's designs and general design sense has always inspired me. Looking forward to great things from Andrew.

Inspirational. While I don't always like Kim's work, I admire how he kept putting his work out there, and it paid off.

The guy talks about himself in the same breathless manner as Apple's marketing. Hubris comes to mind ...

Wow, new ads.

I am surprised that his concept totally sucks. Both the font work and the logo. They are so utterly bad, that even I, being just an amateur designer, clearly see how it is bad and where it is bad, and even I could probably make something much better. Apparently, this is the reason why he was hired, as Microsoft is firmly set on the course of sucking.

(By the way, a note for the straightforward thinking folks: the fact that this particular design sucks does not mean the guy is not talented or promising, especially given his young age.)

You suck!

And so does your family!

Yes, this is not a useful post. Neither is yours.

Is life hard for you, a retarded guy?

What's so beautiful about this... "community" is that a nonconforming opinion is downvoted, while a direct rude offense is OK.

Because that what your comment sounded like. "Microsoft sucks and this guy sucks and I can tell it because I can."

(I personally know nothing about you, of course.)

I did not say the guy sucked, I said his design sucked, and it does indeed. And Microsoft's recent approach to design sucks as well, the new Windows logo is a 90 degrees rotated trash can. That was my personal opinion, I just write what I see and how I feel, I wouldn't downvote the folks who greeted the design, because it's their opinion (probably based on the lack of taste, but that's their own business).

All of that weren't personal offenses to anyone, but your comment was.

I can say 'Dude, your design sucks' to my best friend, and it doesn't concern my respect to them in any way. Even geniuses sometimes make crap, especially when they learn. What's so special about this? Are you a bunch of fanatics here to go beat and burn anyone who's got opinion different from yours?

It's sad that you wrote this comment less than a day after writing this:

"When I was a Junior Developer I though I was a genius and knew everything about programming itself, I was not even interested in improving my coding skills, because I thought they were perfect"

Yes, so what? When I was a Junior Developer and knew almost nothing, even back then I could determine that some code is bad because it was unstructured, with bad naming, poor algorithms, etc., because the code was bad objectively, given metrics that do not depend on someone's particular opinion or mentality. I would call the very same code bad today, with all the experience and knowledge.

You still haven't shed the blind belief in your genius.

I don't think I'm a genius, I just think there's a lot of talentless and stupid folks everywhere. And I adore smart talented people, they are such a relief for me, but unfortunately there are not so many of them.

No, actually, I think I am a genius. Is it bad?

a little humility doesn't hurt. You're coming off as pompous

Not bad, just potentially deluded.

To me you are potentially a psycho pervert serial killer. Possible — why not?

Scratch the word "potentially" from my last comment.

OK, I am deluded.

Genius has no meaning as a description divorced from the work.

A distinctive work is just a consequence of intellectual superiority.

My problem is that I am very lazy. The actual work someone can make is F * S, where the F is your intellectual power, and the S is how much you have moved towards your target. If the S is close to zero, being a genius does not help. Actually, being a lazy genius does help being at some decent level even without putting too much effort, e.g. when you have the same or better level of expertise as your average colleague, even though you have invested an order of magnitude less time in studying than them, and don't even have a college degree becaming a boss of those who do.

You haven't really told us why it is so bad. I'm curious why you don't like it?

In a team, the design would be pushed and polished by a number of other team members. This was a one man job, on a team he'd collaborate and come up with more awesome designs. He'd get feedback, where in this case he only got people sniping from the sidelines... people like yourself.

I've thought of that for a while: if someone doesn't see what's wrong, it's just like they're blind. Obviously, it doesn't make sense talking to them.

Let's hope they never put you in front of a client!

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