[Podcast] Interview with Lisa Anderson

Hope you enjoyed my podcast with Jensen. During Explore Design, I also had a chance to sit down and chat with another Microsoft design leader, Lisa Anderson. Lisa has worked in several large companies as their UX director and very passionate about designer's career in technology companies. It's great to hear her insights on Surface UX design and her view on Microsoft design culture in general. Below, I broke my interview into two segments (about 10 mins each) to share with you. You can listen to Lisa's answer on the following questions.

Surface specific questions

Tell us about your role and main responsibilities as a director at Surface UX team?
How is Surface UX team organized?
What are some challenges in multi-touch design?
What's the future for Surface?
How does the Surface UX team work with other Microsoft Experience design teams?

General questions about Microsoft Design

What is the design culture at Microsoft?
In your mind, what are some great design successes from Microsoft in the past 3 years ?
What are top 3 UX design areas/opportunities for Microsoft in the next 5 years?
What is career path for UX designers at Microsoft?
What contributes to a great UX designer?

Lisa C. Anderson is currently the Microsoft Surface User Experience Director. Previous to this role, she held similar positions at Intuit and Autodesk in the Bay Area. In years past, Lisa acted as User Experience Director for several other teams at Microsoft: Windows XP, MSN, Real Time Collaboration. She was also Executive Producer at Corbis for several years, where she produced award-winning, high-end documentaries on CD-ROM (Leonardo da Vinci; Critical Mass: America’s Race to Create the Atomic Bomb; FDR; The Barnes Collection). Her background and education are in Design, Art History, English Literature, Writing, Editing, Publishing.