Microsoft Looks at The Future
Microsoft has
noted that a new generation of young people, born in1980s
and 1990s,
numbers one billion strong worldwide and
some eighty-million in the United States
alone, outnumbers its patents, the Baby Boomers.
More important, for a company that sells technology, it is
the first generation to have grown up in a world where the Internet,
computing, and mobile technology are built-in assumptions.
Earlier
this summer, Microsoft convened a Microsoft Office Information
Worker Board of the Future meeting in Redmond.
The Board included 15 university
students (19-24 years of age) from 14 countries, to serve as representatives
of the next generation of information workers as well as of the
diverse cultures, economies, and
workplaces in their respective countries. Microsoft had told
us about the meeting in advance, so we were able to participate in
two ways – by sending some questions we were hoping the students
would answer and by interviewing Microsoft’s Office of the
Futurist Dan Rasmus about the event.
The
students participated in a week of workshops, brainstorming
sessions, and presentations. Microsoft
is hoping the group can help its Microsoft Information Worker
Business Group help insure that its future products and services
will meet the workplace needs of the Internet Generation, a new
generation of workers who are much more tech savvy than we are.
In
a formal presentation to Microsoft, the student board recommended
that Clippy (you remember that annoying onscreen assistant in
Microsoft Office) be evolved into a Creative Artificial Responsive
Lifeform (CARL) who would take the complexity out of technology by
automatically looking up and providing information and resources and
synchronizing all of a person’s devices.
CARL would need to respond to voice commands, learn a
user’s preferences, and adapt over time to his or her work methods
and information needs.
They
suggested that CARL needed to be much more fluid and intuitive than
Clippy. I’d sure
agree with that. (When
I first read this recommendation, I thought perhaps the students had
been playing too many video games, but now that I understand what
they have in mind I think it sounds like a good idea.)
They
also recommended that:
-
Technology
support mobility and flexibility anywhere and on any device
-
Microsoft
help increase software education and resources in developing
nations, including making them more suitable to the cultures, such
as an African Tablet PC that used icons rather than text as an
interface.
-
Microsoft
help develop a technological and entrepreneurial training program
information worker skills in developing economies.
The board members suggested that
the program initially be located in South Africa, because of its
political willingness to tackle these significant social and
economic issues. They also said the program could be adapted for
other countries, including Brazil, India, China and Russia.
Microsoft executives are planning to gather feedback from the board
members and then determine next steps for the board in the coming
months.
Here are the questions I asked to be sent to the members of the
Board. Five students replied, some of them at great length.
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Do you expect to work in a social office environment where you work
with a physically present team, or will you communicate and work
with your team largely via computer? If the team is physically
present, how much of your communication would be via the computer
system?
-
The
students prefer, by 80% (4 to 1) to work face-to-face, especially if
they need to present ideas and be persuasive.
As one said, “My actual gestures, mimics, level of voice
and appearance can make me express myself easier. As long as I can
express most of these emotions or movements through my communication
tools in the computer I may prefer to use my computer rather than
being in the same environment with the other people.”
-
Do you prefer to create new information with a keyboard or a
pen(cil)?
Why?
-
Do you prefer to analyze information on a computer screen or on
paper? Why?
-
80%
of the students preferred to analyze information on paper rather
than on a display. Paper
is simply still too hard to read.
One disagreed, noting that lots of information is live now,
needing its computer linkages to comprehend.
(I don’t like to read email except on-line anymore, for the
same reason.)
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What do you think will be your most important work tool?
-
Do you have experience with any collaborative tools? (Name)
-
The
students have relatively little knowledge of or experience with the
kinds of collaboration tools (Notes, SharePoint, etc.) that we might
think of. This might
simply be because they’re not present in a student environment.
But the collaborative tools they want are very telling: mobile phones, web meetings, a better way to make meetings
feel more face-to-face, and collaborative software that is more ad
hoc. All of these are
fertile areas for future products and refinements.
Dan Rasmus, the Director of Information Work Vision for Information
Worker New Markets at Microsoft was one of the hosts of the group
and agreed to be interviewed after the meeting.
He
had some comments on the views of the board members and on the
exercise:
The
exercise:
-
This
was mainly about trying to show them things and then letting them
talk about it – Microsoft wanted to do much more listening than
talking.
-
We
don’t know what the future is going to be like so we have to plan
for alternative futures.
-
We
walked through some planned design exercises (African PC, Digital
Divide)
-
We
had some assumptions, like “assume a global, well-connected
world”
-
We
tried not to over-construct the deliverable – but rather let them
use their creativity and their passion
The
board’s point of view:
-
They
don’t seem to like shared spaces (collaboration); they do like IM
-
Third
graders vision of the future – very focused on productivity –
bring everything to my desk; very security oriented (retinal scans,
handprints – non-intrusive, physical)
-
Minimalist
view – offices very clean – set a pencil on the table – table
sucks it in
