Microsoft’s design chief on human creation in the AI era
The first time I met Jon Friedman, corporate vice president of design and research at Microsoft, was in 2019 when he was spearheading a new open approach to design at Microsoft to make its hardware and software look like it came from one company. That's a largely successful work in progress, so these days Friedman […]
The first time I met Jon Friedman, corporate vice president of design and research at Microsoft, was in 2019 when he was spearheading a new open approach to design at Microsoft to make its hardware and software look like it came from one company. That's a largely successful work in progress, so these days Friedman has, like a lot of Microsoft employees, been focused on AI.
I spoke to Friedman last week, ahead of the redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot app announcement, to get a better understanding of the impact AI is having on human designers and creators.
"The change is quite dramatic, and the opportunity is quite dramatic," says Friedman. "The job changed for us. The entire industry and Microsoft were trying to figure out what we can do with this new material that helps adapt computing to people, and it turns out you can do a lot and you can do a lot fast."
In recent months, Friedman's own job has changed because of AI, so he's focused on the content as well as its design. "Suddenly the design job is how do you edit," says Friedman. "Even my job over the past 6-8 months has become an editor-in-chief job of the product, not just the design leader."
As Microsoft attempts to bui …
