Blog Micorsoft is on the cusp of a cultural change. I think the next step is design led engineering.
July 27th, 2005
微软MSN Search部门的用户体验经理de los Reyes认为：“微软始终走在技术和文化改革的风口浪尖，而且他认为下一步应该是设计和创意引导工程和开发。”
Of soufflé and software
August de los Reyes, a user experience manager for MSN search at Microsoft, once spent a month of Sundays trying to make the perfect soufflé Furstenberg—a complicated dish referenced only in a Truman Capote novel. “Just before the soufflé sets in the oven—you inject egg yolks into it. At serving time, the first cut should send yolk spilling over all the different layers,” August says. “It only worked once.”
This kind of vision and perseverance typify August’s approach to design and life. He attended chef school when he was 14, then majored in New Media Design and Creative Writing at Bennington College in Vermont, and was the youngest ever contributing associate at the Harvard Review.
In 1995, August and six other seniors from Bennington produced a CD-ROM multimedia enrollment tool that caught Apple’s eye. They asked the students to present the tool at Mac World Expo ’95 and the exposure brought many job offers. He worked on a series of technologies, from organizing a system for launching Eastman Kodak’s website in 35 countries to researching ambient intelligence at Philips in Holland. August has always thrived at the cutting edge of human-computer interaction, which is what brought him to Microsoft in February 2003. Microsoft is on the cusp of a cultural change,” August says. “I think the next step is design-led engineering.”
Today, August is the liaison between product design and marketing for MSN branding, provides creative direction for MSN branding collateral (photo shoots, CD mass-mailings, and print ads), and owns the look of My MSN and MSN Homepage portals.
He has also worked with user researchers from Windows to revolutionize the way emotion and desirability are measured. It’s no longer good enough that users complete tasks, they should also feel good about the experience—which is how August felt when he finally made that perfect soufflé.
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