This particular competency I feel I am quite strong. Since my first work in the Auckland University of Technology, and before then, I have been using and analyzing my own process and as a result, coming up with Ideas and Concepts has been a major part of that understanding. In my previous University, this was a focus going so far as to explain the traditional "Funnel" as the best process for Idea Generation. I was familiar with many brainstorming and concept generation techniques. Most of what I learn now has links to competency A. Multi-Disciplinary Teamwork and Communication as for the most part, I am working with others to generate ideas.

This semester I worked for Microsoft and one of my main 'jobs' was to let ideas rain. Constant meetings for developing other peoples ideas kept me on my feet generating ideas for different projects. This was the biggest strength of our design team - our ability to generate ideas where others couldn't. I learned how fragile ideas are and that for one to be successful, it needs support from all angles.

These angles were provided for and with respect to idea generation, the Human Computer Interactions team manager, Desney Chen suggested we ideate "without limitation". Technologies within MSRA (with a total of 18000 bright individuals) are beyond the capabilities of something like an arduino and are open for design interpretation. I learned a lot about resource management, understanding the limitations of technologies (linking to competency Integrating Technology) just by ideating relentlessly with other people from all over MSRA.

I was part of a large initiative started from within our design team that we named "Co-Lab". Essentially, with the building divided, Co-lab aimed to bring together our design team, the Engineering Team IEG and the researchers and propel research projects into marketable products internally. This led to many meetings and projects where I acted as the representative for our design team, ideating and developing projects like "SketchCom" which we later renamed to "Microsoft Storm".

Perhaps the hardest challenge for me here was to generate ideas and concepts that were acceptable by Engineers, Designers, Business Minded folk and others who had completely different concepts of successful products. I am strongly convinced the best Ideas will happen when individuals in a team have a similar way of thinking.

The first thing my boss mentioned when I arrived at Microsoft was the technologies that MSR (microsoft research) was strong with (Kinect, Speech Recognition etc) as well as directing me towards internal MSR projects. One of the first tasks I had to do was redesign the internal website. Considering my skills with web design, this was more a task of understanding the internal server (Which became quite a challenge) and making sure that the technologies I used would not create licensing issues. Essentially, all the projects on the website were protected and thus the security of the website had to be strong. This was a good learning curve for me as I conventionally design websites without security. Following this, my main project "Superkid" saw rise to a lot of work with Microsoft Kinect. I discovered huge limitations with the tool that I did not previously envision. With superkid, we built a prototype in-house in the design team as the engineers were taking too long. Ironically, using external technologies proved quicker and more expansive for this project as internal SDK's for kinect seemed limited. In this case, I learned quickly that even within large companies, scrounging outside is often more beneficial and likewise, I learned the best tools to use for Kinect and 3D Depth sensors, skills I will definitely use in future TUE projects

Lastly, my work with the project I called "The Imagimachine" gave insight into the technology of Speech Recognition. I designed a concept around being able to simply tell a story and have it generated on a tablet, a tv or a phone without having to touch anything. I had discussions with teams involved in speech recognition, learned how competitor tools such as Apple's Siri worked and how I could implement similar or expanded functionality with my own tool. This was engligtening again because such a technology within TUE is usually converted to "wizard of OZ techniques".

In all, my work within this field was so diverse, I gained basic knowledge of technologies I will likely use in the future. Such introductory knowledge is a great place to start for advanced technologies and has led me to focus on designing "without limitation". Such technologies are truly capable, with a strong understanding of the limitations of each, I can now better pick appropriate technologies for future concepts.

Perhaps the most challenging concept within Microsoft, this seemed to be a competency I taught more than learned about. Despite this, it was imperative to all research projects that users were tested. I myself was involved in the testing of many projects and providing user feedback. For the best research, User focus and perspective drove the projects.

While Microsoft Research Asia may not focus on the user, when we had visitors from Redomond (Headquarters in the US), it became apparent that projects such as office and windows 8 began with "Scenario Based Studies" where like in the industrial design world, products would begin with "Jeff the accountant" and features would be driven by focusing on such specific users first before other features were considered.

In all, the lack of User focus in MSRA was the reason for my placement there. 10% of my job was to promote design philosophy within the building arguing for people to think about users from the very beginning of projects. Such promotion included seminars and lectures as well as collaborating with research teams, discussing their ideas and providing support and feedback about their proposals to other departments.

The sheer location of Microsoft Research Asia exploded my view of the world, my view of design and challenged my belief in "Universal Design". Chinese culture is in every way, a reverse of what I knew. Social activity is abundant and yet social morals are almost non existent with people screaming (by nature of the language, which I can speak) and the interactions that simply would not exist elsewhere.

My perceptions of Intellectual property were challenged as China's laws on such things are null to the extent that Microsoft has a ban on all external devices to protect the intellectual property that it cannot sue interns for stealing. I also learned of competitors such as Baidu, Ren Ren and QQ which replace the "blocked" web services like twitter, Facebook and google. These companies have no R&D departments, copy new features released by the western counterparts and are monitored by the Chinese government for anything out of the "ordinary".

Getting my head around chinese culture, how to work with the chinese (about 90% of the building were chinese born) on projects was a difficult process. While talented in many things, it was often the case that ideas were limited, that orders needed to be given where normally they wouldn't and where myself as an intern had to challenge people at a much higher status than me on the basis of ridiculous and ill informed statements that could potentially harm projects.

Despite all of this shock however, Beijing itself has a huge Design scene that I visited a lot, located in the art district. I visited a lot of exhibitions and conferences with out design team and was pleasantly surprised with the emerging culture in universities that is producing unique and interesting design for a place that disregards western ideals like intellectual property.

The nature of working for a company like Microsoft is that absolutely nothing I did could go without thought towards the greater good of the company. In general my work had to "create disruption within MSRA" and thus be promotable to the greater Microsoft. Essentially, my projects had to be possibly profitable.

I discovered this first hand working with CIG, a team from within Microsoft whose job it was to take internal ideas and bend and shape them for the market, developing business strategies and giving such projects perceivable price tags. I went through this process with my project Superkid and discovered first hand how products from Microsoft are formed. It is very difficult for a project, under the influence of such teams, to remain the same as they were in the first place, despite how good they may seem. I watched as my project was broken down for different markets, lined up with licensing agreements and proposed in completely different ways that distracted it from its initial conception.

This was truly enlightening for me and enforced my lesson once again that if I ever create my own company, or work for another, it will be with the understanding that people within that company should have a greater purpose or passion and that business will come from this drive, not the other way around.

This semester, I was fortunate enough to work with Microsoft for 6 months. It was, as expected, a life changing experience. While I set out to explore certain competency areas, mainly 2 (Integrating Technology), 5 (Designing Business Solutions) and B (Design and Research Processes) in order to balance out my previous years of learning, I ended up being exposed to a lot more that I imagined I would have been exposed to as an Intern. Working as a project manager on 3 projects and as a design advisor for others, I was exposed to many aspects of Microsoft's Design process.

While I had my own goals for competencies, I was only able to really focus on these during my own projects. At Microsoft, one of my main jobs as part of one of the only design teams in the building, was to support other projects in ideation stages. As such, quite a lot of my work focused on competency 1 (Ideas and Concepts) with a lot of my time spent in small "focus rooms" generating hundreds of ideas a session. In many ways, this was beneficial to expose myself to the understanding that ideas are fragile, plentiful and that what really matters is the timing of an idea's release. In many ways, I got the feeling this was not one of Microsoft's strengths.

For 2 (Integrating Technology), most of Microsoft's projects were "technology driven". This means my job was to take already well established technologies that microsoft was skillful with (Kinect, Speech Recognition, Microsoft Office, Windows 8 and so on) and generate ideas to integrate with these technologies. Unlike TUE however, because Microsoft is mainly software, it was difficult for me to push hardware oriented projects. Nevertheless, if I took technology as a generic concept (As in, including software), I learned a lot about topics I am sure to include in future projects at TUE. Namely, in my project Superkid, I learnt the limitations of a seemingly unlimited technology, Kinect, which as described by many is great for some things, but terrible at others. I also worked with people in Speech Recognition to understand the bones of tools such as competitor Apple's Siri, how it works and how I could apply that learning to my project "The Imagimachine".

With regards to Designing Business Processes, it was about 4 months into my work that our team collaborated with another section of the building - known as CIG. This team handles projects within Microsoft and has one essential goal: Make money and lots of it. Projects from our design team were taken further by this team who worked with us to break down each project and look at how financially they could have impact. We worked together to develop solid business plans which would later be promoted higher up in the Microsoft chain. What I learned from this experience was phenomenal, and equally scary. Despite the risks of competitive companies, now focusing on human centered design, money still drives most decisions made within Microsoft. It was important for me to understand this for future reference if I ever interact with large companies again.

In general, the fact that I was allowed to work with head researchers, speak and have lunch with people I read about online that were previously inspirations to me and eventually manage my own projects and work with people within them, I was exposed to a range of different processes that will eventually extrapolate my understanding of Design in a business, marketing and ever changing fluid world. Each competency will be discussed in depth under the tabs above with relation to both my work in Microsoft and the Academic Development; Risk Society Offline.

Using kinect in many projects, I learned how difficult it is to "predict movements" in a human way. The direction of many projects in microsoft are along the understanding that one day, we will dispatch the desktop metaphor and that we will just use our hands to manipulate tasks. For form and senses, most of my work was with "Human Computer Interaction", the way we manipulate things in a virtual space with our hands, speech, our eyes and how we perceive new interactions.

One of my first projects was working on a keyboard for the new version of Windows, windows 8. This OS, first and foremost is designed for touch. One of the problems however is using this touch interface on a desktop computer without touch. My explorations for a keyboard that would work for this produced ideas that focused on interesting ways to build in multi-touch through already existing keyboard layouts by means of adding touch layers to keys or multitouch bezels that would function logically with the windows 8 interface.

With projects like this and with my learning from other projects, I developed a basic theory that to eliminate confusion and promote progress toward more human interaction, new methods for interaction should not forget the previously understood methods. In such a theory I proposed that one should never completely remove an old way to manipulate something such as a folder, but should promote the more human method such as stretching open the folder with your fingers. Eventually, the old way is forgotten but remains to provide comfort for those who are used to it. The danger comes when too many methods are included or not enough are, dangers which I feel Windows 8 in many cases has ignored.

For my next semester, making a product with a focus on aesthetics will be key to my development and this competency is therefor part of my PDP for my final bachelor semester.

Working with a likeminded yet extensively foreign design team was very useful for my understanding of teamwork. While I have always promoted team work, microsoft made it very obvious that direction is necessary when teams have completely different desires for the same project. In discussions that I had with engineers or researchers, I felt I was very rarely understood. Likewise when our design team worked together, we could speak the same language and didn't have to describe things in such detail, and were therefor more productive.

We figured out ways to best communicate with others in the building, namely researchers, who did not see the benefit of their ideas hitting the market. Our language changed and we were able to "translate" our concepts.

One of the biggest ways we did this was through video. I produced 4 different films to describe different projects as it seemed this was the best and most effective way to describe out ideas. We also produced power points that would discuss each feature workflow in depth so to then be worked on in a team discussion.

In future projects, I will aim first and foremost to work with people who view the world with similar goggles yet have different skills. It seems this is the best way to work efficiently and effectively, while also producing quality results with a similar philosophy readable by the user.