Overview

Microsoft Research Asia researchers have collaborated with product groups over the years to ship over 200 innovations in Microsoft products. The Innovation Engineering team supports these technology transfers, and fosters new product incubation, by bringing together software design engineers, user experience experts, program managers, business strategists and others to help turn ideas into reality.

The group comprises the following core functions:

User Experience

User Experience (UX) provides critical user research and interaction design leadership for prototypes and new concepts. The team offers expertise in the areas of user research, user interface design, prototyping, usability testing, visual design, and information architecture. It is the MSRA home for specialists in the areas of human-computer interaction design, product design and usability. UX works closely with researchers, incubation program managers and project teams to conduct user studies and understand user needs, develop user scenarios, and design new features, products and services affording a leading quality user experience.

Engineering

Engineering evolved from one of the first groups created in Microsoft Research Asia-the Technology Transfer Group (TTG). TTG initially focused on engineering support for prototyping and productizing of researcher inventions. Today, the group has an expanded charter to include developing infrastructure and platforms in support of deployment-based research, promoting software engineering excellence across the lab, and developing new product incubations. Engineers in Innovation Engineering tackle challenging projects based on advanced research technologies, and deliver high-quality software and deployed services. The group applies expertise in software development, testing and operations.

Incubation

Innovation Engineering sponsors and mentors high-potential incubation projects leveraging unique capabilities of the lab. Program managers, business strategists and other specialists, often on special visiting assignments from other Microsoft R&D facilities, provide leadership and support for incubation projects. Internet Economics is one of the exciting new areas for incubation. Explorations of new applications and services include work in the areas of marketplaces, social networking, user-created content, and new information experiences.