The people behind Windows 11: Using psychology, familiarity and inspiration to create widgets

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Before moving to Seattle with her husband seven years ago, Priya Chauhan had never worked in digital design. She came from the print publishing world, where she worked on children's books, coffee table books, travel guides, catalogs, window display posters, chocolate and biscuit tins and all kinds of seasonal marketing. If you lived in London at that time, you probably saw her designs throughout the city and in magazines. [caption id=attachment_176128" align="alignleft" width="520]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/08/Dorothy2-2-819x1024.jpg Dorothy Feng (Photo by Ulysses Curry)[/caption] As a student at Duke University, she originally thought she would end up in clinical psychology or research. But she had always been interested in design, teaching herself Photoshop and creating freelance illustrations in her free time. Then, in her sophomore year, she joined a tech group at the school called Hack Duke, which focused on organizing hackathons. She became the group’s director of design, which entailed marketing assets such as branding and website design. That led to more exposure to people in the tech space and consulting for tech incubation start-ups, which is how she began to do UX design. Feng also took a computer science class. She did well and thought she was going to be a software engineer. But she met someone who interned as a product designer, who introduced Feng to the intersection of design and tech – a combination that appealed immensely to her. It would change the course of her life, as she had never thought that there was a way to combine art/design with technology. “It was a huge shift in my career path,” says Feng, who interned for Microsoft before starting a full-time position in 2018. “I majored in psychology and computer science and at that time, I did not see an intersection. Someone told me those are two completely opposite things; how would I make that work? But, I'm interested in both. When I studied psychology, I was very deeply rooted in writing and focused on research, but on a higher level that has helped me approach design in a very methodical way.” But the artsy side of Feng draws inspiration from nature, its simplicity and complexities, as well as daily life, appreciating what she sees around her when she’s walking in her neighborhood. She even gets ideas from the grocery store, through how aisles are laid out and the checkout experience. I think people probably are going to be surprised. Working at Microsoft, she used that knowledge of knowing how things are built to create rapport with developers, but she also had a solid understanding of design. “Throughout my journey as a designer, I leaned quite heavily on my background in psychology. I've written a lot of psychological research papers and I'm really familiar with synthesizing different areas of research,” she says. “That gave me a really deep understanding of the need to incorporate user feedback and research into my work. I couldn't design anything without consulting research.” Feng says user feedback shaped the experience and validated the need for the space widgets occupy, “where people can see everything that they care about, that’s easy to access and can fully customize.” Find out more about Windows 11 and stay tuned for more stories about the people bringing Windows 11 to you. Top photo: Dorothy Feng (Photo by Ulysses Curry)

 

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