Windows 7

Julie Larson-Green is relieved. As corporate vice president of
"Windows Experience" at Microsoft, she has just overseen the successful
launch of Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7.
The software, which went on sale last month, has been a hit with both
computer users and technology experts: early sales of the new operating
system are 234 per cent higher than sales of Windows Vista, its much-
aligned predecessor.
Microsoft acknowledges that it made mistakes with Windows Vista, and
there was huge pressure on the computing giant to produce a winner with
Windows 7. Larson-Green, who arrived just as Vista was being sent to
retailers, saw it as a clear opportunity to go rethink the way the
development teams worked.
Instead of organising engineers into separate groups focused on things
such as search, security and networking, Larson-Green realised a more
"end-to-end" approach was needed.
"We grouped people based on what pieces of software needed to work
together, rather than around specific feature deliverables," she says.
"In the past, there might have been a media team that was responsible
for all the things around media. But this time, part of what the media
team worked on was in the graphics team area, and some was in the
devices area.
"Each team had its technology mission for the area of the code that
they were responsible for, and we planned Windows as an end-to-end
experience rather than each individual team planning what they were
going to do and pulling it all together." The idea was hardly
revolutionary, but for a company like Microsoft, entrenched in
established ways of doing things, Larson-Green's arrival was a breath
of fresh air. "I'd been working on Office and had never worked on an
operating system before. I spent a lot of time learning about the
market, the challenges, the people on the team," she admits.
Vista, she says, had a "rough patch" at launch. It had been in
development for a long time, and "a lot of things had changed in the
world during that time". That forced the Windows development team to go
back to the drawing board with Windows 7, says Larson-Green. "We had to
ask ourselves, everything we know to be true, is it still true?"
The team crunched huge amounts of data about user behaviour to see
which areas needed to be improved and tweaked. Cutting down the amount
of time it took for the computer to get online was a major focus.
"The number one thing people do is connect to the internet," she says.
"We looked at the start-up process, thinking through what things needed
to be loaded in what order. We wanted to make sure your internet
connection was done very early in the start-up cycle."
They also tried to create an operating system with manners. Larson-
Green said she didn't want any interruptions in the flow of what people
do, so that meant fewer annoying pop-ups, which users loathed.
It would be wrong to dismiss Larson-Green's empathetic approach to
system design as typical female "soft skills"; in truth, her career
path has given her a more rounded view of the software industry than
many of her peers.
At school, she says, she was always the girl who was good at maths.
Larson-Green grew up in Washington state, the home of Microsoft. After
deciding to study computer science at Western Washington University,
she had to switch courses. "I waited tables to pay my way through
college, but the computer labs were only open to undergraduates in the
evening, when I was working. So I changed my degree to business
management, with an emphasis on management and information systems and
micro computers."
She applied for a job with Microsoft, and another position at software
solutions provider Aldus. "I got the 'thanks but no thanks' letter from
Microsoft on the same day I got an interview with the other company."
Larson-Green started off in customer support, answering calls for 10
months. "That's a big, huge learning experience," she says. "I learned
a lot about empathy."
She eventually reapplied for a role at Microsoft, working on the Visual
C++ team and Internet Explorer before joining the Office team, where
she took the bold step of replacing the menu-driven interface with
context-specific "ribbons". Consumers loved it, so it was little
surprise when Microsoft asked her to lead the Windows 7 project.
"User interface is customer service for the computer," she says. "A lot
of what I've learned has come from empathy, an ability to forget what I
know and think instead like a customer, seeing a product for the first
time."
Larson-Green already has one eye on the future of the Windows operating
system. Does she envisage it becoming a browser-based platform, like
Google's forthcoming Chrome operating system?
"The browser is a huge part of what you do on the computer," she
concedes. "But you're also able to be connected [to the internet] and
do things without having to go through the browser.
"I think as long as you want to be connected to devices or take
advantage of new hardware and things like touch-screens, which you
can't do without an operating system, it will be a while before you can
see a world where you can just see a browser. And the browser has to
run on something."
Emerging trends, such as gesture-controlled interfaces, like that found
on Microsoft's prototype Project Natal gaming system, are also of
particular interest. "There are things we're learning about that
weren't there at the start of Windows 7."
It's reasonable to assume that Microsoft is already planning for the
next version of Windows, though Larson-Green is coy about specifics.
"There are lots of fun, interesting things technology can do for you
when it knows a little bit about where you are, what you need and what
you care about."

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