Hillel Cooperman and Tjeerd ("cheered") Hoek are two of the key figures in the Windows User Experience team at Microsoft, and they've worked on some the company's more advanced user interface projects over the past several years, including MSN "Mars," Internet Explorer/shell, Windows "Neptune," Windows XP, and now Longhorn. While my first (somewhat humorous) run-in with the Windows User Experience folks came during a Windows XP Beta 2 event in Seattle three years ago, the team has been working tireless toward Longhorn since the early days of Windows 95, when it moved Windows to the Explorer shell.
This interview is the first in a series highlighting the personalities behind the technology. It's often all too easy to depersonalize a company as large as Microsoft, but there are real people behind these products, and they care very deeply that the products they create are as aesthetically beautiful, functional, secure, and reliable as they can be.
News source: Paul Thurrott's SuperSite
