“We can’t rest on our laurels” - Microsoft’s global creative director Michael Dwan outlines next wave of innovation
Microsoft is continuing to push creative boundaries, outlining a host of next-generation prototypes and concepts for products including Skype and the rest of its product portfolio.
Speaking to The Drum at Advertising Week Europe Microsoft’s global creative director Michael Dwan said the company will continue to drive innovation to meet the increasingly “sophisticated” ways that consumers interact with technologies.
“We can’t rest on our laurels, but must always be about the next wave of innovation,” he added.
Dwan referred to the company’s extensive research projects as a major pillar for inspiration when it comes to devising what the next wave of products should be.
“The ideas aren’t always commercialised but they help stretch our thinking and it informs our products even if the exact definition isn’t realised it’s always pushing the boundaries of possibilities and allowing the product teams to select the best of that research for future products,” he said.
Two major themes that he emphasised had emerged from its latest study, in conjunction with IPG Mediabrands, were “creator’s culture” and “enhancing the real”, both of which have been applied to creating new ad experiences.
“In creator culture people are saying they want to shape their interactive environment and do things that are more personal to them and they want to have a hand in architecting the experience.
“Enhancing the real means that when they do use technology they wanted to supplement their real world – they believe that the combined virtual and real world is better together than each of them being consumed independently.”
“Research like this is important in helping us understand that there is a fantastic shift in people’s sophistication for how they use the interactive world, and that that shift has some nuances and depth that we wanted to understand better - so that we knew how Microsoft and the industry should respond to people” he said.
Dwan spoke about the future possibilities for how Skype may be evolved, moving away from its image of two-way or group video messaging, to a more refined, interactive experience.
“We think of Skype in terms of two people talking to one another, but imagine if the camera was above the table and the kid was turning pages in a magazine or doing drawings and their friend’s was drawing on top of their drawing, or they were pointing to the same articles in the magazine.
“These are just imaginings from Microsoft Research – they are not actual products but I think it’s useful when trying to bring to life an imagining of the future – to show that kind of protoyping.
“I suspect we will begin to imagine applications for Skype and for video interaction that go beyond real time and beyond just two people speaking together, or a family reunion or business application,” he added.
Microsoft has already released a prototype (see below) to demonstrate this capability, called IllumniShare.
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