Had the opportunity to work on search for five years across a variety of domains – Outlook (email), Windows Live (desktop), MSN Mobile (device) and Windows 7 (operating system). Much of it was ground breaking, some still ahead of its time. Lots of great discovery and exploration of what people care about the most when they look for things, and what they don’t care about at all.
Windows 7 Search
Microsoft Corp.
2007
As part of the work of revising the Windows Explorer, we did both behind-the-scenes work and UI refinements to enable a much faster and capable search across the entire operating system, including the new content Libraries. Part of that work was to deeply embed a query syntax in key searchboxes to enable filtering on the fly.
Windows Live “Casino” (codename)
Microsoft Corp.
2006
Not shipped. Design exploration for presenting system-wide search in a postcard metaphor, featuring large photography of the backdrop for the header or the entire window. This pre-dates the Bing design that utilized this technique by four years.
Semantic Canvas
Microsoft Corp.
2006
United States Patent #7685116B2
Powerful search syntax teaching mechanism built into working prototypes of the “Casino” project. Surfaced Property|Value pairs that allowed quick and accurate filtering on-the-fly for searches. Still has not been executed to its full potential by today’s search providers.
Microsoft Office – Outlook 2007
Microsoft Corp.
2007
United States Patents #11430416, #11430562, #11430561
Issued March 15, 2007
User Experience Designer for powerful new Search features, featuring the orange filtered state look. This was a major overhaul of the way search was done within the app, and solved a key usability problem of people not knowing their emails were in a filtered state. Introduced a search query syntax language built into the search box itself.
M. Pell | FUTURISTIC DESIGN, INC. 