About my job

Hi, my name is Ron George and I am a Designer living in Seattle. I work at Microsoft I started my own business and love every minute of it. I have never been so grateful and excited to work around such a gifted group of people. I do Experience Design for Software, the Internet, and Mobile Products.

Experience Design is a general term which includes Interaction Design and Product Design. I tend to focus on the Natural User Interface Experience. What may you ask do I do exactly? Well, its pretty simple.

Interaction Design (IxD) is the discipline of defining the behavior of products and systems that a user can interact with. – Wikipedia

Interaction Design is the design of Human Computer Interaction models, or commonly referred to as User Experience Design. We design and develop Natural User Interfaces, Experiences from start to end (whatever those may be), and for the most part all sorts of Software. We sketch, concept, demonstrate, and test interfaces and experiences for what would be the most usable, satisfying, intuitive, and pleasing to the user. I love what I do because IxD has always come very naturally to me, atleast I thought it did. If you have ever sat back and wonder “why would they put a button there?!?,” well you might have a great career in front of you.

The most interesting part of my job is that it is always changing. Users develop skills and habits over time, so the experiences need to adapt to them. Sometimes its good and sometimes its bad. Bad product design can give users such a wealth of bad information and motor skills, we actually have to adapt to bad design. Such as the Iphone… :)

Product Design is a very general term that has all sorts of meanings to different people and countries. Basically what I do is design experiences for a particular piece of software, hardware, or internet presence. Its an amazing endeavor but very taxing and awakening. Check and re-check yourself. I always enlist a group of friends and colleagues from around the globe when designing something to make sure I haven’t missed anything. The true sign of a great designer is to be able to take feedback, give thoughtful feedback, and to ask for an outside opinion. With those few traits you will move light years ahead of your peers.

Interaction Designers use a profound amount of tools in accomplishing our goals. Being a software geek and all around tech head, I plan on documenting exactly what I use. Back in the day I would always wonder what the pros would use. Now that I think back, I guess I would have been surprised at the sheer number of them. When I would think they would only use maybe 3 or 4, I think I currently use around 75 pieces of software.

The most crucial thing to remember is the most important tool of all. The customer. They are such a wealth of knowledge and experience that you can learn from every moment you have interaction with them. The root of our profession is the customer accomplishing their task intuitively, willingly, and being satisfied so they want to do it again. No matter the task. You have to peel back the onion layers many times over to get to the bare roots of what causes satisfaction, desirability, methods of choice, and the philosophy of usability. Its much harder than it looks and it requires much more thought than most are willing to give. If you do choose to give it a shot, then I wish you the best of luck and can only hope that you are half as lucky as I have been. I might be the luckiest guy on Earth. :)

Where I have been seen resting my shoes ….