Microsoft Gives Outstanding Technical Achievement 2014 Award To Microsoft Design Language Team

Congrats to the "Metro" designers who were honored with Microsoft's Outstanding Tech Achievement tonight! pic.twitter.com/7IS4mujRLI

— joebelfiore (@joebelfiore) March 16, 2014

Every year, Microsoft gives Technical Recognition Awards to Microsoft’s technical leaders and innovators. All honorees are nominated and judged by their peers within the Microsoft Technical Community Network (TCN), a community of senior leaders and contributors representing Microsoft’s technical core. This year, Outstanding Technical Achievement 2014 was awarded to Microsoft Design team. This team award recognizes an outstanding and innovative technical achievement that has profoundly transformed the world of software and addressed some of the most urgent technological challenges facing the world today.

This is not a single team, but design leaders from Windows, Office, Xbox, etc. The award was given to the people in the above below. Top row: Alan Urdan(Windows team), Samuel Moreau(Windows team leader), Joseph McLaughlin(Office team), Ralf Groene9Surface team), Ramiro Torres(Xbox team), Front row: Albert Shum(Windows Phone team leader), Denise Trabona(Windows team), Chad Roberts(Windows Phone team), Steve Kaneko(User Experience Leadership Team head), Jeff Fong(Windows Phone team).

By awarding the 2014 Outstanding Technical Achievement Award to the Microsoft Design Language, the Technical Community Network honors an initiative that has quite literally changed the face of Microsoft. Now evident in the user interfaces of Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, and Office, the design language provides users with a cohesive and intuitive appearance where form follows function.
“The Microsoft Design Language is an effort across different organizations and product groups to create a consistent look and feel for our Microsoft interfaces,” says Partner Design Director Steve Kaneko. “It signals a change in the company toward a more immersive user experience that is seamless across the different product groups. It’s our way of ensuring that those who use our products know that our products work better together.”

Over time, the Microsoft Design Language has evolved from a language to more of a philosophy, due to its underlying approach, which brings us back to One Microsoft. The cross-platform, cohesive design qualities that the Microsoft Design Language sought to instill as early as 2008 now serve as a key element of this company-wide initiative.
“In our own way, it was being practiced way before it became a corporate mandate,” says Kaneko. “We needed to change our approach and make our products work together amazingly. And it was done for the same reasons: because our customers deserve it.”
He reflects on this for a moment and then adds, “We’re aiming at a bigger idea, and it’s really never been just about the look and feel. This is not about Microsoft making any big statement that say’s ‘look at me!’ It’s about developing an authentic and sustainable philosophy that scales across all our customer touch points, where we continue to put people at the center of everything we do. Where we take a back seat to them. We need to hold onto this core principle—keep things simple, beautiful, and relevant to those we serve.”

This is a well deserved honor for these guys. Congratulations to all of them. Our readers can also send their congrats messages to these guys via comments section below, I’ll probably try to send this link to the team above.

Read more about their achievement here.