[Podcast] Microsoft Designer: Allison Gallant from XDR

There are about 750 UX designers and researchers working at Microsoft. People in the UX community are often very surprised to hear about it. I think part of it is we haven't given our designers enough opportunities to talk about what they do and what's it like to work as designers at Microsoft. During my training last week at Redmond, I sat down to chat with Allison Gallant, who is a fresh new designer at Windows Experience Design and Research (XDR) Team.

In our 10 minutes conversation below, I ask her the following questions:

• What’s your role and responsibilities?
• Why did you decide to join Microsoft?
• What’s your experience as a new designer at Microsoft, especially fresh out of school?
• What’s it like to work in a large design team such as the Windows Design team?
• What’s your advice for news grads who are looking for UX design jobs?

Allison’s Bio:

Allison is a User Experience Designer in the Windows and Windows Live User Experience Design and Research Team (XDR). Fresh out of school, she has only been working at Microsoft for the past 3 months. Prior to this, she studied at Carnegie Mellon University with an undergraduate degree in Communication Design and Psychology and a Master's degree of Human-Computer Interaction. Although she is quite new to practicing in this field, she is very excited about all the opportunities to improve HCI that working at Microsoft affords her.