"Larson-Green's team began with centralized planning, in contrast with the old culture that let Windows subgroups set their own agendas. As she did with Office, Larson-Green sought insights in a daunting mass of data.
Vista was the first version of Windows to include the remote-tracking software that had helped Microsoft hone Office, and nearly 11 million Vista users had let their PC activities be logged. Larson-Green's team also surveyed more than 250,000 people around the world and showed other users prototypes, some as simple as sketches on paper.
From these billions of data points emerged big ideas that got boiled down into eight design principles. Larson-Green is already planning Windows 8, though her team continues to tweak the Windows 7 user interface." – Alan Cheslow
