Bill Buxton to Change Microsoft From Within: Can Redmond Learn Design?

Remix 08 "Last year at the company meeting Steve Ballmer said quite clearly to 85,000 employees 'If you don't change and you don't go in this direction, we're dead, and I don't want to die.' I wanted to go hug him when he said that."

So says Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft, interviewed at the company's Remix 08 conference in Brighton where he gave a keynote.

The Mix and Remix conferences are design-focused events, part of Microsoft's long-standing attempt to reshape its Windows and Web clients as a more designer-friendly platform, based on .NET and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Buxton is a well-known designer who joined Microsoft nearly two years ago.

His theme is that design is critical to every aspect of computing.

He talks about Apple and why the iPod succeeded.

"When Steve Jobs was asked how he would turn Apple round he answered with two words," says Buxton.

"Industrial design."