Colleen Estrada

My favorite book on design isn't a book about design at all. Or is it?

Margaret Wise Brown's "The Important Book" (a children's book written in 1949) serves as  a wonderful reminder to focus on the important thing about a __________.

If you focus on the important thing, your design will show it.

"Hit it with the pretty stick." A former colleague of mine (an extraordinarily talented developer) used to love to tease me with this phrase.

Is that what we designers do?

Well, yes, it is - as long as you understand the meaning of "pretty." Pretty does not apply to visual aesthetics alone. Rather, it extends beyond form to encompass function and feeling as well.

Design best done is a highly iterative and collaborative process as shown in my sketch (which looks like a lot of diagrams about design process one can find in books and on the web).

My sketch differs though in that I draw it to extend Design to encompass the entire end to end process of making something "pretty."

While Design can step into the process along the way, designers have the most impact when contributing end to end.

For: Small business owners who desire big impact in keeping with their craft and passion.
What: Complete website design and development; content creation; management. Training for organization members to create and submit content; optionally add connected services for donations, shopping, data collection, organization email etc.; blog content authoring/editing and more.

Why: Small businesses need to tell big stories. I want to help small businesses communicate and market their products more effectively using modern and well-designed vehicles such as websites, text messaging campaigns, and other marketing materials.

Contribution: Ability to apply my 25 years of Design and Communications experience to the creation of effective and modern websites for small businesses who seek to set their brand apart. Website design and development; branding, all copy writing/editing, social media management, graphic design and more.

With: Myself primarily (CGE Design) with freelancers as needed

For: any business, club, political organization operator.

What: Complete website design and development; content creation; management. Training for organization members to create and submit content; optionally add connected services for donations, shopping, data collection, organization email etc.; blog content authoring/editing and more.

Why: I wanted to lend my deep expertise to causes in which I deeply believe by helping organizations communicate more effectively using modern and well-designed vehicles such as websites, text messaging campaigns, and other marketing materials.

Contribution: Ability to apply my 25 years of Design and Communications experience to the creation of effective and modern websites for primarily non profits and political organizations. Website design and development; branding, all copy writing/editing, social media management, graphic design and more.

With: Myself primarily (CGE Design) with freelancers as needed.

For Information workers.

What Microsoft AI powered document and presentation authoring tools, Word and PowerPoint

Why During my tenure with the Microsoft Canvas team, the primary need was to lay the foundation for assisted authoring in two of the most ubiquitous authoring tools in the world. Having spent several years in Microsoft Research developing deep expertise in conversational user interfaces, I moved back over to “product” to lead the design teams working on AI across Microsoft Office (as well as design “all up” for Canvas products Word and PowerPoint specifically). Key design challenges included exploring the ethics of AI and integrating radically new ways of authoring (with the help of an assistant) into established products.

Contribution Studio Director, Strategy, Research

With A 70 person design studio inclusive of design disciplines spanning sensory to interaction design.

For Developers who want to build and deploy high quality bots.

What  Bot Framework is a comprehensive offering you can use to build and deploy high quality bots for users to enjoy wherever they're talking - from your website or app to Skype, Slack, Messenger and many other conversation channels. The framework consists of the Bot Builder SDK, Bot Connector, Developer Portal, and Bot Directory. There’s also an emulator that you can use to test your bot.

Why By late 2015 it was clear that conditions existed to finally make the conversational user interface a reality for mainstream digital experiences. Intelligent agents and bots (from Siri to Alexa, Google Now to Cortana, and Poncho to HipMunk) were springing up just about everywhere but developer tools to create quality bots were either not very sophisticated, or were designed for building for a single conversation canvas or experience.

Contribution Design Director, Copywriting, Documentation, Blog, User Research

With Jeremy Cristiano, Irina Smolyanskaya, Kevin Korpi

For Busy people who need to schedule meetings with others.

What A human and AI powered meeting scheduling service that works over email.

Why The process of scheduling meetings takes a significant amount of time; automating this process saves time so people can focus on things that really matter.

Contribution Design Director, Interaction Design

With Jeremy Cristiano, Irina Smolyanskaya 

For Non-developers who would like to build a bot.

What QnA Maker is an easy to use tool that makes bot creation and training as easy as copying and pasting or filling out a table.

Why Tools to build bots are almost entirely targeted at the skilled developer and are not accessible to content creators who are critical to making a high quality bot.

Contribution Design Director, Interaction Design, Copywriting, User Research

With Jeremy Cristiano, Irina Smolyanskaya

For Entertainment seekers and gamers.

What Xbox is an entertainment and gaming service and device.

Why During my tenure with the Xbox team, the primary need was to evolve Xbox from a strictly gaming console to an entertainment solution led from the living room, powered by the cloud, and delivered across multiple screens. For the holiday '11 release, key design challenges included revamped Information Architecture and the bringing together of Kinect and Controller input modalities.

Contribution Studio Director, Strategy

With A more than 100 person design studio inclusive of design disciplines spanning sensory to interaction design.

For People who enjoy sharing interests with others on the web through story collages.

What Microsoft Socl was an experimental social network centered around the creation and sharing of content harvested from the web and assembled in an innovative easy to use collage making tool.

Why As a research lab, we wanted to deeply understand the technology necessary to build and sustain a social network experience and drive our learnings into Microsoft products such as Outlook, Bing and Sway.

Contribution Design Director, Interaction Design, Community Management, Blog, Copywriting, User Research

With Jenny Rodenhouse, Richard Zaragoza, Andrew Osborne

For Smartphone users who want to have a shared photo viewing experience.

What Microsoft Xim was a cross platform mobile app that allowed you to share your photos, not your phone.

Why As a research lab we wanted to explore a software-based synchronous screen sharing and projecting solution (no hardware such as Chromecast required).

Contribution Design Director, Interaction Design, User Research, Copywriting

With Sarah Needham

For The Design Community in Industry and Academia.

What Design Expo is an annual exposition sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Why To explore solutions to a current design challenge and build community.

Contribution Organizer, Challenge Brief Author, University Liaison, Critic

With Design professionals from industry and leading design schools worldwide.

I have been privileged to work on many commercially successful projects over my career. While the projects from "the archives" are not featured in my portfolio, feel free to ask me about them.