STC 2012 Collaboration in a Decentralized Culture
- 2. A brief intro…. • Started working at Microsoft in 1999 editing instructor-led training and elearning • In 2007, moved to Windows Phone as the lead editor • Defined and implemented the voice for Windows Phone 7 in the user interface and on windowsphone.com • A member of the Microsoft Editorial Board since 2010
- 3. Why I’m here today… • Voice • Microsoft’s culture • Collaboration • Communication
- 6. Voice
- 7. Why is voice important?
- 8. Windows voice now… …And what customers think of it
- 9. Sometimes it’s too techy. Monotone. Mechanical. It’ll give you messages that Robotic. informative. I don’t know what the heck Brief but that the unfinished frame It’s means. Ben Stein. Bueller. Bueller. It’s like owning a 1990s of a house…it protects Bueller… Honda Civic versus a 2012 you from the rain, it has The monotonous professor Audi S4. a door, keeps things that puts you to It’s useful and it’s powerful. private…but that doesn’t sleep, that’s smart and mean it has paint on the It’s both easy and helpful It’s acceptable. It does the knows what you need to walls, or decorations, same and frustrating at the or job, but there’s nothing know, or tries to tell you whatever else can make time. flashy about it. with the That geekneed to know, but what you dude something feel more khakis and the glasses on still puts you to sleep. homey and make you the Mac commercial. feel more comfortable.
- 10. Old vs new Before After An unknown error has Something has happened occured. and we're not sure what. Try again.
- 11. The new voice of Windows What customers want….
- 12. More natural. More like a person It’s not humor, per se, it’s just more personal More like a human computer talking to you in a very easy, comfortable way…it’s just easier, more comfortable. It would be quiet. It would be kind of meek and timid until I had a problem. It’s talking to you like you're somebody
- 13. Windows Phone examples Startup wizard Progress text All done. Have fun! We’re looking for your settings…and we found them!
- 14. Microsoft’s culture Made up of distinct organizations with their own cultures, processes, and tools
- 15. Devs don’t say apps?!! How do you get a huge organization to shift its thinking around voice and the power of words to affect customers?
- 16. Style battles Greater need to collaborate across the company to ensure we’re evolving with the industry • Email vs. e-mail • Web vs. web • Use of we and contractions • Use of valid, error, and item
- 17. Example interlude Before After Data failed to load. Unfortunately, we can't Please try again later. get this info at the moment. Try again later.
- 18. Which would you rather read? Before After Because the indicate an equal sign is equality When you enter =text in a used to indicate a comparison cell, Excel interprets it as formula when you operator for a formula and tries to type text or a either text or a value in a value, type the calculate it. To enter =text cell, Microsoft criteria as a string so Excel doesn’t try to Excel evaluates expression in the calculate it, use this what you type; appropriate cell in however, this the criteria range: syntax: may cause unexpected filter results. To
- 19. Friendlier voice Before After Each time Maps requests your Sharing this information helps location, Microsoft will collect us provide and improve your information about your location mapping and local search to provide and improve location services. We won’t use the info services. This information is not to identify or contact you. used to identify or contact you.
- 20. Collaboration in design • Within Microsoft, a trend toward more customer- focused design • Design no longer decided solely by engineers, but a collaboration between designers, writers, and engineers
- 21. Collaboration in branding In parallel, movement in Microsoft Branding to create a cohesive message across all consumer communications
- 22. Collaboration in localization • Original guidelines genericized writing for easier translation • Moving to a new voice means making it more personal, but also more difficult to translate
- 23. Translating Windows Phone • Writers worked hand-in-hand with the localization team to define the new voice • Implemented best practices, like providing an “alternate loc text,” a more generic version of a string • Translators given more freedom and flexibility to reflect the locale
- 24. Microsoft style resources Content publishing teams have 3 resources for style arbitration Microsoft Editorial Board Microsoft Manual of Style Community Forum
- 25. Microsoft Editorial Board • A group of ~10 writers and editors • Monthly meetings • Owns updates to Microsoft Manual of Style (MMS) • Final decision maker for company-wide style guidelines, communicated through email list
- 26. Microsoft Manual of Style
- 27. Click or tap? Say or type? • What you see in MMS is the end result of a major coordination between different groups to align on how we (Microsoft) refer to natural user interaction • Effort driven out of the “new” Microsoft technologies, Games, Xbox, Surface, and Phone
- 28. Virtual voice team • Representatives from groups implementing new voice meeting regularly to share resources • Creation of a company-wide website that will include examples and resources available to all content publishers • Members of v-team acting as ambassadors and resources to teams who are looking to implement new voice
- 31. Questions? Amazon O’Reilly
Editor's Notes
- #2: Provide more context and get into the head of someone who doesn’t work at microsoft. Slow down in the beginning.
- #4: Agenda here that I’m talking about collaboration, and then using Voice and the work content publishers are doing now as an example of collaboration
- #5: Do you know what this is? This is when your computer freezes, you don’t know what happened, and you’re frustrated because you may have lost all your work. Slow this down and pause to give people a few minutes to absorb this.
- #6: We’re in the process of getting all our editors and writers to move from writing in the old way to moving to this. Being more humble, and not talking about how it’s happened in the past, but this is how we’re moving to this. Getting into the style guide was the first step in this journey, and then the evolutionary movement within the company to move towards this. Windows 8 is coming out soon.Get some more visuals of the phone and possibly of Windows 8 that’s already in the consumer preview.[paulcom] Agreed. More shots of great strings in WP7 and W8 would be useful.Video of MS packaging vs. Apple packaging[paulcom] To bookend the video shown at the introduction, perhaps compare packaging art shots of the Zune HD to those of a recent-gen iPod to show how far we have come in understanding consumer preferences in our product design. That, or compare an old Windows software box to a new one.Books online content
- #8: Technical gadgets won’t succeed anymore on just utility; they also need to create a connection with the user
- #9: Strength of the presentation is the new voice at microsoft. Focus on the Windows 8 voice; what do we do about localizing. Mention key terms: collaboration, working across boundaries
- #10: What is Windows?What’s the voice?
- #11: [paulcom] Visual aid idea—Can you get screenshots of this App Hub experience?
- #12: If/when you use Windows 8 and the next version of Office that’s coming out, you can see this change in action. If you have an xbox or a Kinect, you’ll see it now. You’re starting to see it on our websites now.If you’re working on Microsoft products, you might want to consider adopting this, but if you’re working in your own world, Microsoft doesn’t necessarily have an opinion. Don’t mention Windows 8 coming out in the fall.
- #13: What is Windows?What’s the voice?
- #14: [paulcom] Visual aid idea—use WP7 screenshot to illustrate this string in actionTie the examples back into the guidelines for MMS. Use of “we” and “contractions” allowed in the 4th edition of MMS (pgs 10 and 11). Talk about my own personal journey. Where I started and what my thinking was moving to this new voice and the work we did for Windows Phone.
- #15: At Microsoft, there are 85,000 people in the company as a whole. At Windows Phone, there are a little over 2000 in the engineering, 30 in the cpub team.Challenges to sharing resources:Difficult to find on intranet; too much information (and outdated)Many product teams lock down their resources (not searchable)And different audiences (It pro, developer, and consumer)
- #16: Talk a little about the developer space and what’s happening in those conversations. Also a parallel effort on the Marketing/Brand team to work towards a common voice across the whole company, starting with the Windows products, to start talking the same way about our products and to ensure that the design and branding are tied together and communicated in the same way through user-facing documentation and marketing documentation.Applications vs. appsDevice vs. phoneUse of “we”Contractions
- #17: Close the story about why people are uncomfortable talking about “we” and, and how this has been resolved, or is still being discussed and resolved. The information about this will be interesting and how they were resolved.For email and web – there was a period, within just a few months, where the editorial board went back and forth on whether we should use email w/o a hyphen and whether we should capitalize “web.” There was a lot of internal debate where people really didn’t want to change (i.e continue using “e-mail” and “Web”) even though there was evidence in the industry that these spellings were changing and that continuing to use the old ways of spelling would make us look out of date. Arguments against had a lot to do with the cost of changing our content, and the cost to localization to change it. But there was also thinking that if we continued to dictate this style, MSTP and the editorial board would become out of step with the rest of the company, as smaller groups decided to go with the more common industry terms. The other two bullets are still being debated internally at the company. There are a lot of people uncomfortable with the use of “we” Use of “we” and “contractions” allowed in the 4th edition of MMS (pgs 10 and 11).
- #18: [paulcom] Visual aid idea—use WP7 screenshot to illustrate this string in actionTie the examples back into the guidelines for MMS. Use of “we” and “contractions” allowed in the 4th edition of MMS (pgs 10 and 11).
- #20: [paulcom] Visual aid idea—use WP7 screenshot to illustrate this string in actionTie the examples back into the guidelines for MMS. Use of “we” and “contractions” allowed in the 4th edition of MMS (pgs 10 and 11).
- #21: Stakeholders aren’t working in a silo on one aspect of a particular product, and having decisions driven by the engineers. Now participants are immersed in decision making at the beginning of design. They have a much broader perspective of the product, and aren’t focused one aspect. Writers/editors inform decisions about design based on their customer focus/research, and understanding of UX and design.Greater need to collaborate across the company, and the best way to ensure we’re evolving with the industry is to ensure that we’re tapping into the whole community at the company.How to you get all of these people together and work together to create something that’s as clean and different as windows phone 7.
- #25: [paulcom] Visual aid idea—a triangle diagram with each resource listed on a point. More interesting than a bulleted list.
- #26: Product groups include Windows client and server, Office, Visual Studio, Microsoft Games Studio, from most major Microsoft product groups and all audiences (Consumer, Developer, and IT Pro)Meets monthly to discuss style questions that come up on the stet email alias or within our own organizations[paulcom] Visual aid idea for this slide--An arrangement of 10+ XBLA avatars for members of the Editorial Board. Not using their names would give them some anonymity with your audience, but the personality and color would keep it interesting.Can you acquire these? Might be difficult, but worth it.
- #27: Mention that the last edition came out in February; address the fact that “technical publications” was taken out of the title and why. Give some context for the style guide.Point out the difference in the covers, how the first cover for the 2nd edition looks similar to the branding package for the ipod in the video, and the 4th edition is cleaner, more whitespace, and more reflective of our new voice.Definitive style resource for most groups at MicrosoftClear guidelines for writing procedures (and other conventions)Acronym definitionsGrowing perception internally that MMS was becoming outdatedSlow to respond to changes Language was genericizedfor easier localization and machine translationTerminology Perceived stagnancy of MMS reflected churn on the Editorial BoardMembership of Editorial Board wasn’t growing to reflect MicrosoftEditorial Board was much smallerDidn’t meet as oftenMembers had been on the board for several years
- #28: Talk about how collaboration helped come to consensus and also ensure that we’re mapping to the evolution of technology, customer-focus, and language.[paulcom] Visual aid idea—Added a shadow effect to image to keep it from looking flat.
- #29: Virtual collaboration
- #30: Do you know what this is? This is when your computer freezes, you don’t know what happened, and you’re frustrated because you may have lost all your work. Slow this down and pause to give people a few minutes to absorb this.
- #31: We’re in the process of getting all our editors and writers to move from writing in the old way to moving to this. Being more humble, and not talking about how it’s happened in the past, but this is how we’re moving to this. Getting into the style guide was the first step in this journey, and then the evolutionary movement within the company to move towards this. Windows 8 is coming out soon.Get some more visuals of the phone and possibly of Windows 8 that’s already in the consumer preview.[paulcom] Agreed. More shots of great strings in WP7 and W8 would be useful.Video of MS packaging vs. Apple packaging[paulcom] To bookend the video shown at the introduction, perhaps compare packaging art shots of the Zune HD to those of a recent-gen iPod to show how far we have come in understanding consumer preferences in our product design. That, or compare an old Windows software box to a new one.Books online content