Microsoft SwiftKey
Principal Design Manager
2017 - Present
background
SwiftKey Keyboard for Android and iPhone is Fast, Intelligent & Adapts to the way you type, so you spend less time correcting your typos and more time communicating / expressing what you have in mind. With over 350+ languages, SwiftKey is one of the leading multi-lingual mobile keyboards used by millions of individuals worldwide. In April 2016, the SwiftKey product from TouchType became part of the Microsoft family, working together to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Role
SwiftKey, a London based company, was acquired by Microsoft’s MSR AI+Research group, where I managed and led the Computational Computer Vision design team. While in this group, I was presented with a fantastic opportunity to help with the acquisition transition as the SwiftKey founders were soon to vest, and Microsoft wanted to ensure that a smooth transition would take place with adding additional Microsoft leaders to the team. I relocated my family from Seattle to London for a two-year assignment expanding my design team, managing both the Computational Computer Vision team in Redmond and the SwiftKey design team in London.
My role had many aspects:
Drive innovation within the SwiftKey product.
Explore Microsoft products / services integration that would potentially benefit users in enabling tighter integrations from an input standpoint.
Support Microsoft business objectives by leveraging key technologies from SwiftKey into other parts of Microsoft.
Bring Microsoft culture to the SwiftKey product team.
Understand SwiftKey's culture and help bridge the gap with Microsoft leadership.
Innovation & Integration
Microsoft had crucial business objectives in acquiring SwiftKey, and one of them was to push the boundaries of intelligent input on mobile. As an enterprise company, Microsoft has focused on expanding its mobile growth, and having an asset that reaches users worldwide on mobile is extremely important for user awareness of other Microsoft products and services.
Much of the work I was responsible for driving over the last three years has been finding potential Microsoft integrations within SwiftKey. Its been extremely important to not force feature integration for the sake of another team's agenda but to ensure its the right user experience in the end.
Microsoft Bing & Edge Search
Integration = no more switching between apps. Users can search and share directly. Search integration also helped drive Bing search traffic through SwiftKey’s mobile worldwide user base.
Microsoft Speech
SwiftKey uses Google speech as its primary voice input service. Microsoft Speech is now on the iOS platform. This integration benefits our users and, at the same time, is helping to improve Microsoft’s speech service ML models.
Microsoft Translator
Retention numbers have grown significantly in many global areas, has also been hugely successful in improving Microsoft’s translation ML language models.
Microsoft Puppets
After Apple announced Animoji, Huawei was very keen on having a compete, and the Computer Vision design team I was managing was engaged in a similar project that we moved to SwiftKey.
Read full project background here >
While finding ways to integrate Microsoft products and services had been super important, I spent a reasonable amount of time looking at areas to push the boundaries of Intelligent Input Across Microsoft. The vast majority of that work is unfortunately still confidential.
Research & Product Process
Research has been a core part of SwiftKey's startup product culture, and I was very fortunate to manage design researchers on my team who have helped bring focus and understanding to the entire product team.
My research team focused their efforts on a strategy in conducting early research throughout the product lifecycle to help contribute to the overall product direction and business goals. Their focus brought SwiftKey customers to the forefront during the execution of all features. They have ensured that designs are fit for purpose and based on genuine customer needs. They are using a combination of Qualitative and Quantitative research methodologies throughout the product lifecycle to understand users' attitudes and behaviors better. Methods include - Ethnography, Surveys, Interviews, Usability Testing, A/B Testing & Diary Studies.
My team has executed many initiatives, and one highlight would be our hugely successful Unboxing Study, which set out to better understand how users who "unbox" their newly purchased device perceive and use SwiftKey for the first time. Part of SwiftKey's core business model has been to ship its keyboard and underline technology to 3rd party Android OEM device manufacturers such as Sony, Vivo, Samsung, LG & Huawei. This integration enables the product to achieve wider distribution and to improve our language understanding models by leveraging secure/private user data. In 2018, Microsoft and Huawei entered into a broader AI partnership that would include the shipment of SwiftKey onto every Huawei flagship device sold outside of PRC (People's Republic of China). Public Announcement >
Huawei's explosive growth in the last two years has helped drive SwiftKey's MAU (monthly active users) & DAU (daily active users) numbers significantly. Because of these substantial MAU/DAU numbers, we wanted to understand how BTB users differ from our BTC users. Many of our BTC users understand the core value proposition of SwiftKey since they have heard of the benefits, and that has driven them to download and install from the Play Store. With our BTB users, they have inherited SwiftKey as their default keyboard vs. downloading it by choice.
The research results have helped drive awareness of our growing BTB users and how they were not fully aware of SwiftKey's core benefits. Several product initiatives were essential outcomes:
Increased messaging inside our product for new users
Brand awareness, since most users didn't know that SwiftKey is part of Microsoft
Uncover language and layout gaps in the many countries that Huawei is shipping.
View the full research overview and Unboxing Study >
Research at SwiftKey is a resource and has enabled the entire product team to investigate critical areas for product innovation & business strategy. Many of our quarterly planning and initiatives are from research findings and investigations. As part of our research focus, I drove a product process with my product management peers to streamline our approach, which included establishing quarterly planning reviews (QPR) with leadership.
Key Technology Integration & Outcome
There were many aspects of why Microsoft acquired SwiftKey, but one core reasons were for its underline technology called Fluency. SwiftKey's next word prediction bar, the intelligence behind the iron curtain that learns over time of what users will most likely want to type next, along with all the 350+ language models makeup Fluency. It's an open-source SDK that can be consumed by any platform. SwiftKey Android & iOS mobile apps are Fluency's most significant customers, but that same technology is now powering other areas across Microsoft - Microsoft Surface touch keyboard, Hololens, Xbox, and Outlook. Being part of the SwiftKey leadership group, it was vital for me to help individuals at SwiftKey find the right technology partners across Microsoft to help with the adoption of Fluency into many of these products/services.
Another outcome of my two years with SwiftKey was to prepare the team for another large project - Microsoft Surface Duo. Recently announced, it has been vital for Microsoft to have a keyboard product to help with this new dual-screen device that runs on Android. Much of my team's involvement in 2019 has been to work with the Microsoft Surface team to ensure SwiftKey works flawlessly on the new Duo device.