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Ralf Groene, former Surface design chief, joins Amazon

Ralf Groene at Amazon
Ralph Groene at Amazon. Source: Ralf Groene's LinkedIn

In the second half of 2023, Panos Panay, one of the founders of Microsoft Surface and the man behind the brand's unconventional and revolutionary designs, left the company to work at Amazon. Now, over one year later, another major figure from the Surface team is joining Amazon.

Ralf Groene, the head of Windows and devices design at Microsoft, now works alongside Panos Panay at Amazon. Ralf retired in April 2024 after working at Microsoft for over 17 years and helping it create now-iconic products like the original Surface, which inspired a new device category and revolutionized mobile Windows devices.

Despite the rocky start (at some point, Microsoft admitted it had made way too many Surface RTs), the Surface became a successful brand that grew into other device categories and even tapped (unsuccessfully, sadly) into the mobile market with the now-dead Surface Duo and Duo 2. The impact of the Surface devices was big enough for Apple to acknowledge the new category and implement its own version of a tablet with a keyboard and a stylus.

While Panos Panay has always been the face of the Surface brand (he is known for very passionate and emotional presentations), it was Groene who conceived the idea of a Windows tablet with a kickstand and a keyboard cover. Ten years ago, Groene showed his sketchbook with various Surface mockups depicting multiple postures, the iconic kickstand, and other concepts that, in 2012, materialized into the original Surface RT and the first-gen Surface Pro.

Now, at Amazon, Ralf Groene will work as a lead designer for the Amazon Devices and Services business. Ralf announced his new position in a post on LinkedIn, which you can check out here.

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