Portrait of Richard Banks

Richard Banks

Principal Design Manager

enterprise knowledge

Project Alexandria

The aim of Project Alexandria is to help organizations extract useful knowledge from across the company so that it can then surfaced, shared and used by their employees…

The Future of Looking Back

While we tend to think of most digital things as only having a shelf life of a few years, the reality is that we’re now taking digital photos,…

a group of people posing for the camera

Thinga.Me

Featuring “GrabCut” segmentation technology, developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge, Thinga.Me was an iPhone app that allowed people to take photos of the important physical items in their lives,…

Things We've Learnt About...

“Things We’ve Learnt About..” is a publication from the Human Experience & Design team that summarises our work around a specific theme in a way that we hope…

About

Richard is Principal Design Manager for Microsoft Research (opens in new tab) in their lab in Cambridge (opens in new tab), UK. His team work in partnership with social and computer science, looking at The Future of Work. (opens in new tab) Much of Richard’s current focus is on new issues and opportunities raised by artificial intelligence for both people, as well as the design profession more specifically. This is part of a broader interest in exploring the boundaries of technology, creativity and society through a human-centered lens.

Richard is author of “The Future of Looking Back”, a book which focuses on new digital legacies and their potential impact on memory and reminiscing. He is honorary Professor of Design for the University of Dundee and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He holds 44 patents in a broad range of technology areas. Richard joined Microsoft Research in early 2006, and before that spent ten years working as a design manager on many of Microsoft’s major products, including Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows.

In addition to his day job Richard likes to paint people (opens in new tab).