Cortana on Windows Phone

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Sr. UX Designer, Microsoft, 2013-2014

I partnered with the Windows Phone team to develop Cortana, a virtual assistant for Windows Phone. Cortana helps proactively by providing recommendations and updates, reactively by taking voice and text queries, and behind the scenes by learning about you and your habits. This was a leap ahead of the command-and-control speech interaction on previous versions of Windows Phone.

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This partnership was concurrent with the development of Xbox One, which implemented conversational understanding (CU) in search.

What I Did

Using my expertise from working on Xbox One, I helped the Cortana team:

  • utilize the Speech Interaction Framework
  • understand what worked and did not work on Xbox One
  • frame the problem
  • develop possible solutions
  • design, document, and test key interactions such as Call and Text

What Shipped

Cortana on Windows Phone is an intelligent assistant, which handles complex CU queries via voice or text. This virtual agent both provides proactive content, such as flight information on the day of your trip and notifications to leave for appointments based on travel time including traffic.

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