Meet The Lady Who Gave Cortana Her Personality, Talks About Cortana Creation Process

Microsoft Jobs team today posted an interview of Susan Hendrich, Principal Program Manager Lead, Windows Phone at Microsoft. Susan was the person responsible or Cortana’s  personality (written, spoken, and the circle) as well as chit-chat, the new feature that will be part of Windows Phone 8.1 release. In the interview, she revealed that working on Cortana over the last nearly two years has been the highlight of my career and read some behind the scenes stuff below.

How did we create Cortana and who is she?

To create the personality of Cortana, we started by interviewing celebrities’ personal assistants. We learned what makes them successful. Then we thought deeply about what personality attributes our users would like in a personal assistant. From that research and a lot of iteration, we created a brief that outlines who Cortana is. We use it to help guide us in all decisions when thinking about how Cortana would respond in conversation, what tasks she would do, or how she might remind you of an urgent situation.

Cortana is competent, caring, confident and loyal. She’s always prepared to help, but not bossy. She’s eager to learn. When she’s chatting, she can be outright funny, peppering her answers with banter or even a sparky comeback. She assumes friendly familiarity with you, but her job is to be your personal assistant.

Read more from here.