I am a Principal Design Research Manager at Microsoft.  For Office - including client, web, and mobile software and services - I have built and managed design and research teams for the past 10 years.  I am currently managing market research, product research, and data analytics teams, and we're constantly redefining how we work. 

We work directly with users in our labs and in their homes and workplaces, and rely on data feeds to understand usage.  (We even help design some of those data feeds.)  We also rely on social media data, and primary or secondary market research.  We tell user stories in writing, in person, with video, with design sketches, and by logging and tracking bugs.  We scale and are more agile by teaching others to derive their own insights, evangelizing how to think about putting hypothesis testing to work.

Use the menu above to go through my portfolio chronologically.

A few examples of what you can find: 

But for the most relevant and recent set of experiences - such as building a data analytics team and doing more holistic research - check out what I've done in the Gemini release.

Ask me...

Does a lot of process make sense when you're trying to be agile?
How can you leverage big data to make great designs (and what are its limitations)?
What kinds of ways to evangelize research questions and to walk through experiences have had impact in our latest release of Office?
How do you hire and grow awesome designers and researchers?
How important is physical working space for a design team?
Why was it not crazy that Google tested 41 shades of blue?
What was the Tasks/Methods study and why was it so successful?
What were some of the biggest Microsoft blunders that I was part of, and what did I learn from them?
What leadership lessons can be learned from Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, and Alan Mulally?
What's a key secret of the success of Pixar that we've leveraged with great impact at Microsoft?