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Mixed Reality Part 2: Creators Jan 24, 2018

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How is Mixed Reality (MR) changing the way we experience the world? We explore this question with three creators using MR to entertain, connect, and assist people with different abilities. First, we chat with Mia Tramz, Managing Editor at LIFE VR, about using virtual reality to travel the world. Then we catch up with Zach Clark, a veteran who was injured in combat and is now using HoloLens to help people with visual impairments and brain injuries navigate hospital settings. Finally, Microsoft's Dona Sarkar and Spencer Reynolds take us on a tour of becoming a virtual hologram via Microsoft's Mixed Reality Capture Studios. Episode transcript JASON HOWARD: Welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast. You are listening to Episode 11 part two, in our series on mixed reality. Today, we're talking to creators in the mixed reality space. Mixed reality, also known as MR, is the term for experiences where physical and digital objects coexist and interact in real time. We can reach these experiences through a combination of headsets, computers, and external sensors, or more sophisticated technology like the HoloLens. Microsoft, and Windows in particular, has been a leader in enabling mixed reality experiences. In fact, Windows 10 was built from the ground up to support innovations in mixed reality. To learn more about Microsoft's commitment to MR, check out part one in our series on mixed reality. Hardware and software technology are both important for mixed reality, but so is the context available on the platform. Creators in MR are using it to tell stories, enable innovation, and even provide medical care. We're still discovering all the ways MR could impact our lives. Our first guest today talks to me about the challenges and opportunities of creating entertainment content for virtual reality platforms. She's calling in from her office in New York where she develops mixed reality content for Time, Incorporated, the media giant behind more than 100 magazine brands and websites, names you've probably heard of like Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine. MIA TRAMZ: My name is Mia Tramz. I'm the Managing Editor of Life VR, and newly Time's Special Projects Editor for Time Magazine. I develop and produce VR and AR experiences for all Time, Inc. brands. So that includes Time, but also Sports Illustrated, People, EW, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Essence & Style, the list goes on and on and on. And I also lead the company's strategy in both markets. JASON HOWARD: Wow, it sounds like you have quite the reach. MIA TRAMZ: I do, I do. I get to do a lot of fun things and wear many hats. JASON HOWARD: So officially you are Managing Editor for VR Content. What's a typical day like for you. MIA TRAMZ: On the one hand, I can sit down with the editors from pretty much any of our titles from Time to People to Sports Illustrated, and brainstorm, you know, big ambitious and smaller, quicker turn VR, AR, and 360 projects, or I can go out into the world and find projects that align well with our brands, and kind of integrate those editorial teams into the development of, you know, projects that are coming to us from the outside. And then I also get to come up with a lot of projects on my own, which has been a really fun part of the job. We create for and publish across many platforms, everything from Facebook 360 to Samsung Gear to our Life VR Cardboard app, which is available for free for iOS and Android -- do my little plug -- to Oculus and Vive, which are, you know, at the higher end of the spectrum. We are also very newly a Microsoft MR launch partner, so we have a Life VR app on the new Windows MR platform. And, you know, each of those platforms requires an understanding of what works best on that particular device, understanding the different types of production that it takes to create some effective for those different platforms. So I get to work a bunch of different muscles, and I'm constantly learning and being thrown into new situations. It's a really fascinating job. JASON HOWARD: No doubt that keeps it interesting and entertaining. So you've mentioned, you know, the broad variety of platforms that you engage users across, like the Life brand itself has a long history of telling stories across a ton of different subjects, you know, everything from news to sports, fashion and food, of course. How does your approach in telling stories in the virtual reality space differ from telling stories with traditional means like video or a magazine feature. MIA TRAMZ: Well, I'll answer that in sort of an indirect way. Life VR is meant to be an extension of the Life Magazine brand. When this initiative was, you know, being thought up in our company, one of the issues they were trying to solve for was going into VR as a publishing company was distribution. It's one of the hardest parts of being a creator in the VR space right now, getting eyeballs on what you're creating. And what they decided was instead of, you know, developing separate VR apps for People and Time and Sports Illustrated, it would make more sense to create an umbrella brand that all of that content rolls under, so that if you went to go watch a Sports Illustrated experience, you might come across a People experience that you were interested in or a Time experience while you're in that environment. And that's what the Life VR app is. But the reason they gave it the Life name I think is really interesting. They went back and found the original prospectus that Henry Luce, who founded Time and Life Magazine, wrote for Life. And if you read it, it reads like a VR pitch. He's talking about taking you to places that you couldn't see otherwise, to see the shadows on the moon and the depths of the jungle and to walk through walls. And if you think about the format of Life Magazine, you know, it was those huge, beautiful, printed pages, and gorgeous, huge photographs. It was about as immersive as you could get with a print product. And he was giving you a window onto the world that you wouldn't have had otherwise. So I think in creating a Life VR brand we were taking the legacy of our storytelling, which was to transport our readers to all the places in the world that they can't get to otherwise, and really fulfilling what we think the promise of VR can be with the brands of storytelling that we're so well-known for. JASON HOWARD: So how would you convince somebody who normally prefers traditional media, for example, like a print magazine or whatnot, to give this virtual reality thing a try. MIA TRAMZ: This is a person I have to convince that I am physically with, I would just show them a few VR pieces, and that's something that I do a lot in my job. I do a lot of VR demos. And my thought there is it's pretty immediate when you see a good VR experience for the first time. There's not much selling that I would have to do. You kind of just get it. But in terms of our readership, this is something that we think about a lot. There's a lot of consumer adoption hurdles when it comes to VR. If I make a project and someone comes across in like their Facebook feed, or if they're hearing about it from a friend, that project needs to be interesting and compelling enough that they're not only going to go out and find the app to watch it and that they then have to download, but they're also either going to find or buy a VR headset to watch it in, and then they're going to take some of their TV time to sit down and watch this thing that I've produced. So from the get-go the projects have to really excite the viewer enough to do all of those things to watch them. And then once they get through all those hurdles, you have to kind of deliver on what the promise of the projects seem to be. So for example, instead of turning out a high volume of content that maybe isn't quite as ambitious, what we've focused on is tackling really big projects that if you came across them on any channel that you're getting your content from, or if you heard about it from a friend, if you heard about this project, you would feel like you had to see it. So, for example, Capturing Everest was one of our projects that we released with Sports Illustrated in May of this year, and it's the first bottom to top climb of Mt. Everest in VR as a documentary VR series. We released it in four episodes, and we start by following three really amazing climbers. One of our climbers is Jeff Glasbrenner. He was the first American amputee to summit Everest with our climb. Then we have Lisa White, who's a cancer survivor. She was in chemotherapy while she was training to climb Everest. And then after she finished, therapy went straight to Nepal in order to climb. And then we have some really amazing Sherpas and mountaineers that are helping them reach the summit. That project was both a VR experience, it was a print story and a cover story for Sports Illustrated. We published it as a series of 360 videos on Sports Illustrated's website. And then there's also a whole augmented reality feature that we launched with that issue of SI. If you came across that project, my hope is that it's so cool and it's so exciting that you're willing to go through all of the hurdles needed to actually watch it. It's really about capturing people's imagination and making the case to them that this is worth your investment of time, regardless of whether you're familiar with the technology or not. JASON HOWARD: So obviously making the path and taking the trek to go to Everest is something that while some people do, there's a lot of people that won't have that opportunity in their life. Which kind of leads me into the next thing that I want to ask you about. Life VR has done a ton of work for travel publications, including recently a virtual experience for Vancouver, BC in Travel & Leisure Magazine. Can you tell us a bit about how virtual reality will impact the future of the travel industry. MIA TRAMZ: I think what's really amazing is we can give you a sense of actually being in that place in a way that you can't get with video or with text. And I think the other really exciting thing is with Travel & Leisure in particular, it's not so much about hotels or cruise ships or things like that, there really is kind of an adventure, some spirit there that we can tap into. JASON HOWARD: I can see how that would make a big difference in getting people excited about travel. How do you see virtual reality technology changing entertainment like television or film. MIA TRAMZ: Where I think VR becomes really interesting in the film industry is when filmmakers use it as a standalone tool for storytelling as opposed to something that's augmenting a film that they're creating anyway. So I think the best example of that and the most interesting example of that right now is Alejandro Iñárritu's piece CARNE y ARENA, which is installed at LACMA in Los Angeles. This piece is different in a few ways. It's a physical installation, so it's an experience that you are walking around in. You are watching what is essentially a documentary film in VR. He has recreated an encounter between border agents, immigrants, and refugees at the Mexican-American border, and he's recreated an interaction that actually happened. You are in a way stepping into a documentary film, both visually and physically. And when you think about that, and then you perhaps add in the layer of what if you could do that sort of experience with let's say four or five or your closest friends, and you could see each other in the experience, I think the opportunities that opens up for a filmmaker get really interesting. And I think that the resources that the film industry has in terms of producing something that at that level, with how much it costs, the technology that's needed to pull that off in the way that you would want to see it, it's something that the film industry will be able to do with VR that no other industry really has the infrastructure to tackle in such an interesting way. JASON HOWARD: So we've talked here about the film industry and previously we mentioned a little bit about the travel industry. What other industries do you see virtual reality having a broader impact on. MIA TRAMZ: Well, I think healthcare and education are two really big ones, and they're ones that I'm working on within Time, Inc. I think it's important for your listeners to know that VR is not a new thing. It's been around for over three decades. And it has historically been used as a teaching tool. So for example the military and NASA have used VR for decades to train soldiers and astronauts. It's been used to treat PTSD. It's been used to provide stress relief. And I think in the medical industry now some of the more interesting applications are using VR instead of anesthesia, using VR to help patients have a better overall experience at a hospital. There's some really interesting applications where VR can have inherent value as a tool as opposed to being a means of entertainment. And I think there's been a number of studies conducted by Professor Jeremy Bailinson at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab around VR in education as it applies to elementary, middle school, and high school. When you get into how could it enhance education on the school level, how can it enhance healthcare, both from a training perspective and a patient experience perspective, I think that there is a ton of promise there for those two industries. JASON HOWARD: Well, I have to say this has been a fascinating chat. Hopefully, our listeners have learned a thing -- I know just from the conversation with you I've picked up a thing or two along the way, so thank you for that. MIA TRAMZ: You're welcome. JASON HOWARD: But before we close out, is there anything else you'd like to share. MIA TRAMZ: You know, I would love to encourage your listeners to seek out our content, either from the Life VR app, which is something you can download onto your smart phone if you have iOS or Android, or of course on the new Windows MR platform. We have a really fun, new application for that headset where you actually get to step into a 3D world that is inspired by the Life archive and see some of our most famous covers as huge buildings. It's a cityscape built out of Life Magazines, and then you can explore some of our other experiences in that environment. It's pretty cool. JASON HOWARD: Awesome. Well, Mia, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. MIA TRAMZ: You, too. You, too. Thanks for having me. JASON HOWARD: Mixed reality has the potential to transform so many industries. And like Mia mentioned earlier, healthcare is just one of the fields that could see big changes with this new tech. Take, for example, this Windows Insider who is developing a HoloLens app to help people who have severe brain injuries. Zach Clark is a veteran who sustained a brain injury while serving as a machine gunner in the Marine Corp. A machine gunner is a highly dangerous combat position, and Zach was wounded while serving in Iraq. Now he's working to help people with similar conditions through mixed reality. Zach, welcome to the podcast. Tell us about your background and how you got started on this project. ZACH CLARK: A little bit about myself, I've always tinkered with computers, even before the Marine Corp. I would always take stuff apart, and somehow we'd lose parts. And so I became pretty good with computers. My family wanted me to find something in the computer job, and I wanted to -- you know, I wanted to fight instead. And obviously that…

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Mixed Reality Part 1: Microsoft Dec 13, 2017

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Over the next two episodes, the Windows Insider podcast explores all things mixed reality. In part 1, we chat with the Hololens team about design elements in Windows Mixed Reality and how developers can get started creating immersive experiences. We also hear how virtual reality enhances social life and creates community with people from all over the world. Find out more about Windows Mixed Reality here: https://aka.ms/MoreInfo_WindowsMixedReality Episode transcript ALEX KIPMAN (from video): Now we're standing together at the threshold of the next revolution of computing. Now, the thing that excites me about this revolution is that computers will empower us to renegotiate our very contract with reality, giving us the capability to transcend time, space, and devices In this revolution we will immerse ourselves in virtual worlds of our choosing, and we'll be able to accomplish impossible things. And we'll be able to do all of this while creating lasting memories with the people that we love Our very sense of reality is set to be transformed as we enter this new era of computing, the era of mixed reality JASON HOWARD: That's Alex Kipman, Technical Fellow here at Microsoft, delivering the keynote at a recent event where he unveiled the company's vision for mixed reality And as you can tell from that clip, his vision is a bold one. Microsoft's plan for mixed reality is nothing short of transforming the way people interact with the physical and digital worlds But let's back up for a second. What is mixed reality, and what will it enable us to do? Welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast where we explore all things Windows, the Insider community, and beyond I'm your host, Jason Howard. You're listening to Episode 10, the first of a two-part series where we'll explore mixed reality Microsoft has been a pioneer in mixed reality, also known as MR, starting with the groundbreaking launch of HoloLens in 2015. The HoloLens is the world's first untethered holographic computer that enables people to have experiences that blend both the physical and digital worlds To learn about recent developments in MR I've invited a couple experts from the HoloLens team to the podcast today BECKY HARUYAMA: My name is Becky Haruyama, and I am a Principal Designer for the Windows Mixed Reality Engineering Team. And what I've been focusing on most recently is the customer experience in the physical Microsoft stores where people who are going out and looking at what is this Windows Mixed Reality, we have design and experience for them to kind of better understand why they should invest in this KATHERINE HARRIS: Yeah, and I'm Kat Harris. I am also on the Windows design team, but I am a developer and I work mainly with our open source toolkits that we provide to developers to help them really dive into working with our headsets, and making very high quality, cool, new experiences and new tools for their companies or bringing their ideas to life JASON HOWARD: So Becky, let me ask you, what is your definition of mixed reality? BECKY HARUYAMA: So we are familiar with the physical world. We live in it every day. It's made out of atoms. It's things that you can touch. And then there is this digital world that is made out of pixels. And mixed reality is the blending of those two realities together And so while that is still really abstract, if you start thinking about augmented reality and virtual reality, those are actually under the spectrum, the umbrella term of mixed reality So augmented reality is when you have digital artifacts in your physical world, so you can see your environment, you can move around inside of it, and there are digital artifacts that are around. And there's different kind of fidelities of that And then of course on the virtual reality side your environment is completely digital. And there's not really like a hard edge line, it's more of a blending of people, places, and things. And so you could have a fully digital person in a fully physical location or physical place. And so it's really like Alex Kipman talks about this dial, the mixer, that kind of mixes people, places, and things between augmented reality and virtual reality. So there is no boundary between the two, it's really a mixture of those three characteristics under the umbrella of mixed reality JASON HOWARD: So Kat, your work is focused on enabling developers to create mixed reality experiences. What are some inspiring things you've seen people do with this new technology KATHERINE HARRIS: A lot of different things. What's great about mixed reality is that it's kind of an open platform for a bunch of different industries to kind of jump into. You have the medical industry, you have education, you have training people. And it's this new exploratory like medium of giving content to people and kind of training their brains or delivering that content in a different way that they've never really experienced before And so we're enabling developers now to create new experiences that we would have never realized ourselves. Just being in the tech industry we're kind of in our own little bubble. But getting to share this technology with a bunch of different people allows them to create some really cool things I met a woman last week actually who was working in robotics, and she was using the HoloLens to control multiple robots and like control where it was going. And I was asking her, like, oh, that's so amazing. She's like, yeah, what would be really cool eventually is to be able to have a counterpart application in immersive reality, and have the headsets where people could experience like what the robot was experiencing perhaps. And that way you have one person controlling it with the HoloLens, and another person experiencing what the robot is experiencing JASON HOWARD: Wow KATHERINE HARRIS: Yeah, exactly. I was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool, I want -- I want that application now BECKY HARUYAMA: Tell him about what that event was KATHERINE HARRIS: Oh yeah. So last week, we had an event with women in VR. We invited a bunch of women creators who had HoloLens out in the field in LA, New York, Paris, and had them all come in for a two-day workshop to kind of introduce them to the new headsets, as well as showcase their awesome HoloLens applications So there was about nine or ten different applications that people were showing off. One of them was a museum application called HoloStoria where museums could use it, and you can have 3D assets, place them around your museum, scale them up, add 2D information to also display to the user. And you didn't need to know anything about programming to use it. So you could give it to curators and stuff, and they could just easily go around and create their museum add-ons or extensions to their physical locations And a couple other fun ones, there was one where you defend kittens from aliens attacking. So that's more on the gaming side One person was using AI to train a dragon. Think of a Tamagotchi, but with a dragon that could interact with your physical world. So it knew where walls were, it knew where the ground was, it could fly and burrow and avoid stuff, and you could interact with it, give it commands We also had like art installations where you could see a stage and interact with your friends and see this art installation come to life Muralize is a very popular application where you take your Instagram feed or any Instagram photo and put it on a wall, pin it there, and then you can actually have paints and stuff and paint the wall with the headset on, so you can see your art. So it's helping artists create in a new way that I would have never been able to come up with BECKY HARUYAMA: And this whole thing was kind of identifying people out in the wild who are creating amazing things on HoloLens, and then the effort was helping them kind of port these experiences over to Windows Mixed Reality immersive headsets, just to kind of enable them to have broader reach JASON HOWARD: So it sounds like developers obviously they have their hands on this, they are doing great things already. What are some of the key things that, Kat, you and your team are doing to enable developers to have a good experience in this space KATHERINE HARRIS: Yeah, there's a bunch of things that we're trying to do to meet developers where they are So we have a repository on GitHub called the Holo Toolkit. And it's a toolkit of assets and scripts that developers can use with the engine Unity. It's a game engine to use simulations or create 3D environments. And using those scripts and the toolkit they can easily get started with the basic foundations of how do you do spatial mapping, how would one do like hand gesture for tapping or gaze. And so the scripts are already given to them JASON HOWARD: Let's talk about some of the design elements in Windows Mixed Reality. Becky, can you tell us about the considerations you and your team had during development BECKY HARUYAMA: We really wanted to make sure that we had content that would be interesting to people who are gamers, people who are not gamers, men and women, different ages. And so we had that as a goal And then we were also looking at the Cliff House, which is our kind of, quote/unquote, "home" in mixed reality. It's the environment that you cruise around when you're inside the headset. And we looked at the design of the quote/unquote "architecture," and there are different spaces in the Cliff House And so we looked at what we call these different psychological fields or what are the things that you do in these different types of rooms or these different kind of locations. So we have a back patio. It's really beautiful. It's very relaxing. You're looking out over Mt. Rainier. You can go outside and there's birds chirping. So the psychological field for that is relax and dream And then we have a studio which is more your typical kind of office studio space. And that's more for creativity and productivity And then we have the deck which overlooks the water. There are these floating islands. We like to have a little bit of fantasy in with our reality. And that one's more aspirational. It's more like what's next for me. I'm about to decide what I'm going to do with my life. And so that room is learn and discover And then we have the theatre, which is this really amazing, huge space that is where you have your games and your movies and it's more about like escaping and playing So we kind of had that as our organizing principles for the way we wanted the demo to unfold. We looked at what content we needed in each of those locations to kind of ensure that we would have an experience that would really resonate with a wide group of people JASON HOWARD: Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Cliff House and why is that the first place you land in the Windows Mixed Reality world? BECKY HARUYAMA: So one of the things that I think is really interesting when we talk about mixed reality is realizing that on our desktop our 2D screen when you go to the Start Menu, like that's kind of your center of gravity, like that's how you go back to it, it's how you move around, and that is kind of kind of the paradigm that we use So when you think about transitioning into a spatial analogy, and it's actually the thing that we're most familiar with in the world. Like we were born and we move around in the world, and it is a spatial interface, it is a spatial environment So when you think about what is a home, it's something that everyone can relate to, hopefully, that it is this place that is kind of central to who you are and to what you do. And architects and space planners really leverage these constructs that we're familiar with around what situation am I going to do in this room and in this room and in this room, and then you design kind of a place around it So having it be a home really seemed to make the most sense, because we wanted it to be familiar, and we infused some like fantasy into it, like I mentioned before with the floating islands. So it really is like this aspirational, amazing place that we wanted people to instantly understand how to move around within it But it's not your normal home. Like there are no doors, there are no windows. You can hop up onto the roof, which is my favorite place to go KATHERINE HARRIS: Same BECKY HARUYAMA: Yeah, it's so fun. It's got the best view And so it just seemed to make the most sense We weren't going to do like a forest. Ah, I'm lost in the forest, you know, or like you're on a beach. Well, okay, that's fine, but we wanted it to have a certain level of utility. We wanted it to be a place that was comfortable, and we wanted it to be neutral enough in the sense so that you could personalize it in the way which you organize all the things that matter the most to you, the apps that you like the most And it was actually inspired by a really beautiful modern house that was built in the 1950s, I believe, it was the Farnsworth House. If you look it up online, it's this really beautiful, kind of super simple, streamlined house, had a lot of glass, really simple lines. And the architect built it for his client to kind of support her hobbies, which were playing violin, reading poetry, and looking at nature. And so it was this really amazing kind of inside-out space that when everyone looks at this picture, it's like, oh, I really want to live there, that's like the most amazing house. And so that was a lot of the inspiration for the Cliff House And we picked the external environment to be inspired by our beautiful Northwest, and that's why we have Mt. Rainer there also JASON HOWARD: Nice. I actually didn't know that about the history. That's kind of cool that it's based off of an actual house that exists BECKY HARUYAMA: Yeah, well, a lot of architecture is this really interesting -- you know, you look for inspiration, and then you kind of apply it to the goals that you're trying to facilitate I mean, I think the most important thing is we wanted people to be able to identify with it, and to then make it their own. And so that was one of our main goals JASON HOWARD: So to the point of personalization and making Cliff House your own, right, do either of you have your own Cliff House that you've designed and customized and - KATHERINE HARRIS: Oh yeah, yeah. Becky, you go first BECKY HARUYAMA: Yeah, okay. So I have spent a ton of time in the headset kind of creating my own environment. And my favorite thing was when I put up the photos app, and put my own personal photos in, so it turned into like a slideshow. And so I'm hanging out in there, and I'm doing my self-hosting and kind of figuring out how we were going to create the demo for the retail stores. But then there's my family right there with me. And then we had kind of an internal contest of who could like make the craziest Cliff House. And some of the other designers made these amazing -- like they take the holograms and they would like make -- I don't know, there was like a hundred flamingos or monkeys, I don't remember what it was, or they'd like take the shopping bag and make it huge, or, you know, it's really fun, because there's a lot of scalability. You can play with the scale of things in a way that you can't do in the quote/unquote "real world." And so like playing with the holograms, and then putting your apps in the way that you want to, and like what's on the roof and -- okay, Kat, you go KATHERINE HARRIS: My favorite thing is to make the Netflix app as…

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Making Technology Accessible Nov 30, 2017

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In honor of International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3rd, the Windows Insider Podcast team explores advancements in inclusive technology. For decades, Microsoft has been creating products and services to serve people of all abilities, and in recent years the company has made a stronger commitment to this goal with the appointment of Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie. In this episode, we chat with Jenny about the future of inclusive tech, and we learn how feedback from users (and Windows Insiders!) is shaping Microsoft's efforts. To find out more about Microsoft's commitment to accessibility and inclusion, visit Microsoft.com/Accessibility. Episode transcript: NARRATOR: Welcome to the Windows Insider where we explore all things Windows, the Insider community and beyond I'm your host, Jason Howard (ph). You are listening to Episode 9, and this month's theme is accessibility JASON HOWARD: Wait a minute, that's not me. That was the Windows 10 Narrator. And it's more than just a podcast gimmick, the Narrator feature helps people who are blind or have low vision navigate their computers by reading what's on screen When you think about how much of what we do in the world relies on what can be read, you really start to understand how this technology could impact the lives of millions of people More and more accessibility features are built into the DNA of Microsoft services and products. These features deliver on Microsoft's mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. That includes ensuring people of all abilities can participate in life, work, and society Today, we're going to talk to someone who's taking the ideals of accessibility and inclusion and putting them into action. Please meet Microsoft's Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie So here you are the Chief Accessibility Officer. JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: I am JASON HOWARD: What does that mean JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Basically, it means that my job is to drive for a great experience for customers with disabilities and employees with disabilities, and also really pursue the concept of inclusive design. So it just means I'm really thinking about a section of our customer base that's pretty big, and how we can ensure that we're delivering great products, great services, great hiring process, to ensure that we're really inclusive JASON HOWARD: A few years ago, accessibility could have been considered a side project at many companies, but things have changed, at least at Microsoft. Now it's becoming an integral part of our company culture and product development. Can you tell us how that happened JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Yeah, it's kind of cool what's going on, and I'm loving being part of it. But actually accessibility has been part of Microsoft's strategy for well over actually 20 years. But we've definitely in the last couple of years decided to really kick it up a notch And by kicking it up a notch, it's just really leaning into the opportunity that we have. You know, there's a billion people in the world with disabilities, a billion plus. These are our customers, our friends, our peers, our everything. And there's a whole suite of innovation that can come from really designing products and building products that include disability So we invested in some resources across the company, across our product divisions, including my lovely team, and really decided to go after that opportunity to build better products, and to really think about how we were hiring talent across the spectrum of disability as well JASON HOWARD: So Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has a son who's in a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy, and is paralyzed. Satya has said in his new book Hit Refresh that having a son with disabilities has made him more empathetic, and that's one of the reasons he's committed to driving accessibility and inclusion at Microsoft. That explains why the company is working towards some of these accessibility initiatives On a personal level what experience has led you to working in accessibility JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: It's a great question, and Satya, the book is just it's incredible. And if you haven't read it, please do. I mean, Satya is sharing his own personal experiences there. It's just incredibly powerful I think we've all had a personal journey. My personal journey, let's just say I would never have predicted that I would be doing this job today. I mean, I come from a small town on the outskirts of Birmingham in the UK. I went through mainstream education. I went to a music college. I got a classical music degree. And I thought I was going to be a really cool classical rock star or a music therapist or something in that vein And then I started working in IT, actually in a newspaper in London on the IT help desk, and realized that I dig, I just love problem-solving. And I thought that was going to be my career was, you know, solving problems with IT and doing a bit of music on the side But all the way through the one stream that I've had all the way through this is that I'm deaf, I'm profoundly deaf. And my deafness has decreased since I was a child So I went to music college with moderate deafness. It's slid since then. And I never, ever -- I mean, I hid my deafness for many years, wasn't really open about it. But I think maybe people way wiser and smarter than me could have predicted the path is me realizing that I could really use these skills, and use them to make a difference, not just for me and my friends, but to make a difference seriously in a company like Microsoft So I came to Microsoft 13 years ago. I came to run technical support, still solving problems, and then about five, six years ago took a risk and changed career, and went to be an individual contributor to change the world for customers with disabilities, and I've never looked back JASON HOWARD: Wow. So how does working in this field change the way you see the world JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: I've worked in different jobs over the years, you know, whether it was support or online advertising for a while. I've worked in different things. And I firmly believe that technology has the power to empower. And I've seen that in different spheres, but I think never more in the work that I do today, which is every day working with peers and friends, seeing how they're leveraging technology and just realizing and appreciating what we can do to make that experience better, whether it's somebody using a wheelchair with limited dexterity manipulating some part of Office, or it's somebody who's blind working through a web page, whether that's our own or someone else's, or me with captioning and how that changes my life and others, and how we can get that more integrated into the fabric of our company So you know, I really do think that it's a really empowering field to work in. I walk out every day with the same frustrations and same joys as everyone else, but I do have a deep-seated sense that we are making a difference. And that's the opportunity we have JASON HOWARD: Well, as you just mentioned Office, Microsoft has developed a wide variety of accessibility features such as Windows 10 Narrator, Office 365's built-in tools for authoring accessible content, things of that nature. There's even eye tracking technology that enables people who have limited mobility to navigate their PCs using only their eyes Can you tell us about the development of those features? Did anything come up unnecessary during the R&D research and development cycle JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: I don't know what you mean. I don't think anything ever comes up that surprises during an R&D cycle. (Laughter.) I can't ever imagine that scenario playing out Always. And I think at the core if we follow those principles of inclusive design, inclusive design is all about making sure that you design a product that is embedding the feedback of people and experts. And in our area that's people with disabilities So whenever we're looking, and Office has done incredible job across every single component of Office 365, across every platform, of putting a brand new bar of accessibility out there, and that's anything from PowerPoint to Excel to Sway, right? If you don't Sway, you should Sway. And every single componentry has been designed in collaboration with people So that means you do some prototypes, you get them out there, you get a bunch of people in a room, and you say, hey, but have a play, and scenario-led and all that good stuff But yet it's very hard to replicate the experience of someone who's blind or someone with a visual impairment. The speed at which they are reading the screen, as somebody who's deaf it's very hard for me to comprehend, and it's way faster than we can sign You have to lean into the experiences that you get from people, and you learn the hints and tricks and the keyboard shortcuts are very important. And if you have tried to go off the standardized path, you need to pull it back in a little bit And just the extra words that we tend to put in, or if we put in alt-text, you know, the words that describe images, and we don't put those in accurately, just how destructive that can be to the overall usability of the experience So I think we've learned a lot along the way, and we've definitely learned a lot with eye control, the new feature in Windows, because that came from a hack actually three years ago, the first hack that I ever got involved in, and it was a guy called Steve Gleason from Louisiana who came to us with a list of beautiful ideas that basically were, hey, Microsoft, can you make my experience better? He's an NFL player, a Spokane native, Washington State native, but living in Louisiana with his wife and beautiful kid Rivers. And he was the genesis of a three-year journey through our research division, through Windows division, and many, many more, and many people with ALS here in Seattle that helped us to get eye control into Windows And we're still learning. It's a beater feature, and we're still learning. You can't replicate ALS. It's about hours and hours and hours of sitting with people and understanding how to make sure it's the best experience But yeah, you can now control your mouse with your eyes. You can type with your eyes using a Windows device with a full Creator's Update. So it's pretty kickass JASON HOWARD: That's quite a journey, it seems JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Yeah, I do think it's a journey, and I think we'll continue to reiterate. And that's also why Insiders are so important, right? We need -- we need people to give us that feedback, what is working, what is not, what can we tweak, what can we improve, what's driving you nuts. We're only as good as the feedback that we get JASON HOWARD: I wanted to ask you about how you include people with disabilities in the product development process, but it seems like the Insider programs are a great way to start with that JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: You know, there's multiple, multiple also ways to give feedback. There always are in a company this size with as many products as we have The Insiders I cannot promote enough. I mean, I think it's just a brilliant way to get involved in early stage technology that may be buggy, that may have some funkiness to it, but you have the opportunity to give us feedback knowing that we're listening, and know we're really listening for our customers with disabilities who are using accessible technology. We want that feedback. It's gold dust. And you have the chance to shape the next rev, right, of Windows. There's nothing more powerful than that The same with Office. You know, there's an Office Insiders program. But there's also other ways. If you're not too game to install a potential version of Windows that may disrupt the flow a little bit, then there's User Voice. We have forums there where we're always listening for features. We're voting them up, voting them down And also you can give feedback within Narrator built-in screen reader So there's plenty, plenty ways to make sure your voice is heard JASON HOWARD: And now just kind of as a personal note, being on the Windows Insider team, one of the things that when we originally got started, accessibility wasn't necessarily a blocking gate as part of promoting builds from our internal canary and self-host rings into the fast and slow rings. And part of the feedback that we got was we were making it entirely too difficult to get some of the feedback that was extremely important to get during that development cycle. So especially for the slow ring and more so now into the fast ring accessibility is becoming a blocking gate to help ensure that we don't break that experience for the users who are giving us that type of feedback JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: I love that. I'm so excited that the priority of accessibility within Insiders and within our products broadly generally is at that level where, yeah, if we're not cutting it, we're going to stop ship, right? I mean, it's that important to us. So yeah, I mean, the advice I get, know your power. You have huge power to influence the flow of our product set JASON HOWARD: So along the way obviously there have been many changes of course. Was there anything that you thought would be an easier problem to solve but proved to be a bit more complex than expected originally JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Harder to solve. You know, I think when you're looking at accessibility across as many products as we have, and we have really five product divisions, and each of our product sets is launching multiple, you know, literally hundreds of products every year and every month and every week, you know, my biggest challenge today is just really making sure that we keep the consistency, we keep prioritizing at this level, and we keep innovating Yeah, there are some brilliant features that have come out of now our emphasis on AI in one of our five divisions that's making an impact in Windows. In fact, if you're blind and using a screen reader or Narrator, and it comes up in images, it's leveraging AI describing that image and embedding alt-text in and speaking that as part of your experience So no longer are we reliant on everyone to be able to write really good alt-text, right, the descriptions behind these pictures. We can leverage some of our AI infrastructure. And I'm looking forward to doing that a lot more, that kind of collaboration across the groups, bringing different parts of joy and wisdom from one into the other. And both Office and Windows are doing amazing work there But yes, it's a broad gig, and the bar is very high, because we do believe that this isn't just about meeting a conformance or compliance, this is about leveraging the power of what is possible with the lens of disability JASON HOWARD: So the Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update was available through the Insider program months ago. And the public beta has already launched. The actual retail release is occurring right now. And obviously Insiders were able to preview this. Were there any specific features that showed up in this past development cycle that you've seen in action with real users out in the world? JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Eye control we've already mentioned. That's built into Fall Creator's Update. It's an early feature. We're already getting some feedback. We really want more. And, you know, that's one that's just going to grow. You do need a 4C…

Full show notes at the publisher

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