Crafting Copilot's AI with Stephanie Blucker of Microsoft

Stephanie Blucker, a senior content design manager at Microsoft, shares insights into her team's work on AI integrations across products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Loop, Planner, & the M365 app. She explains the evolution of content design from UX writing to a more integrated role, emphasizing content designers' importance in creating user-friendly tech products. Stephanie discusses CoPilot, an AI feature in Microsoft products enhancing productivity & creativity, & highlights the shift towards deterministic computing, where users control their interactions with technology through prompts. Stephanie's journey from marketing manager to AI key player at Microsoft illustrates the value of diverse backgrounds in tech & the importance of passion & curiosity in career development.

Stephanie Blucker Quotes:
💡 "My team works on AI integrations in a lot of different products at Microsoft."
🎨 "Content design... it's this very user-centric way of thinking about interaction flows."
🤖 "It's all about your creativity... what you're telling the system to do is ultimately what you're going to get."
🌍 "No pivot is unachievable... I went from a marketing manager at a nonprofit to a writer at Microsoft for Cortana."

Resources:
Master of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington

About Stephanie:
Stephanie Blucker is a senior content design manager who’s worked for Microsoft for nearly 7 years. She leads the M365-OPG Copilot & Apps content design team, which handles UX content for Copilot/AI integrations, web, & mobile apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Loop, Planner, & M365. Previously, she was the lead content designer for Word, PowerPoint, & the Accessibility UX in Windows settings; led the refresh of the Inclusive Language feature in Microsoft Editor; drove a team in establishing guidelines for managing sensitive topics in conversational interfaces; developed bot personalities for Project Personality Chat; & wrote for Cortana. Before Microsoft, she worked in the nonprofit field for 10+ years. She has a Bachelor of Journalism & a M.S. in Human-Centered Design & Engineering.

Connect w/ Stephanie on LinkedIn
Microsoft

Chapters

• 4:10 Content Design & AI Integrations
• 6:14 CoPilot: AI Integration in Microsoft Products
• 7:54 Transition from Clippy to CoPilot, enhancing user support
• 9:21 CoPilot's unique approach to AI integration
• 11:43 Developing features & planning product roadmaps
• 12:37 Customer satisfaction as a key success metric
• 14:12 Navigating the complexities of introducing AI features
• 15:41 The Future of AI Integration
• 19:37 Role of Content Design
• 21:06 Career Path to Sr. Content Design Manager
• 23:29 Advice for Career Transitions & Conversational Design
• 29:09 The Future of Data Science

Transcript

0:00

Hi, my name is Joan Palmiter Bajorek. I'm on a mission to decrease fluffy hype and talk about the people actually building in AI. Anyone can build in AI, including you. Whether you're terrified or excited, there's been no better time than today to dive in. Now is the time to be curious and future-proof your career, and ultimately, your income. This podcast isn't about white dudes patting themselves on the back. This is about you and me. and all the paths into cool projects around the world. So what's next on your AI roadmap? Let's figure it out together. You ready? This is Your AI Roadmap, the podcast. Hey folks, this is Joan dropping in to say hello and giving you a little context about this episode. So this episode I interview Stephanie Blucker who works at Microsoft on Copilot and I love this episode. Stephanie and I met a few years ago here in Seattle when she gave this amazing design workshop about crafting the personality of the conversation. and the bot and just really thinking so intelligently and beautifully in such a complex and then simplified way about how we build these on the back end and to know that she is working across so many products that my friends are telling me they're literally implementing today at companies. Like my friend the other day was like, we literally had a training about Microsoft Copilot the other day and I was like, whoa, like Stephanie's work is. directly now connected to many people's day to day. And so I think it's really cool to see people's work evolve and the impact and Stephanie has such a great perspective about how teams are shifting and evolving. Anyway, enough from me. I know you wanna just hear the episode. Have a wonderful day. Look forward to listening to the episode. Let's dive in. Hello, hello. It's so good to see you. Could you please introduce yourself? Of course. Hi, I'm Stephanie Blucker. I'm a senior content design manager for Microsoft. Yeah. Awesome, well thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on? Oh my gosh, what are we working on? What is time? What do we do here? So my team works on AI integrations in a lot of different products actually at Microsoft. So that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Loop, Planner, and the M365 app. So that's the short list. We work on other things too. We work on the web apps for. Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well. And other mobile apps, the M365 mobile app, but I would say the most interesting and relevant for this particular conversation is probably going to be the AI integrations. Yeah. a lot of products. I'm a little overwhelmed just like hearing that one. Is it, is it that you're working on component parts that are used across those products? Are you, your team deeply entrenched in all of those? Like. Yeah, I mean, that's a piece of it. So, you know, everybody on my team is a content designer. So basically, the field of writing for technology products has evolved over time, as I'm sure you are completely aware, but maybe folks who are listening to this are not quite as keenly aware. The discipline used to be really focused on UX writing. So, you know, having a final design, you know, handing it off, you know, and saying, hey, we need strings for these screens or something like that. that has greatly evolved over time. So we now do content design, which is really a full stack service as far as Microsoft and many other parts of the industry are concerned. So as soon as designers need placeholder strings, or are even experimenting with designs, we work with them side by side and PMs as well to come up with what information should be. provided, where it should be provided, the various interactions around all that content, and how we should kind of slow drip it to the users over a flow, as opposed to hitting them all on one screen with a bunch of different disclosures and a lot of overwhelming information that may or may not be intuitive or that they might or might not understand. So it's really just this, I don't know if content design, it's this very user-centric way of thinking about interaction flows. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay. Whoa. Unlike my brain's visualizing or attempting to visualize all these new things, can we pick just one example that might be a little bit more tangible for folks as they process what the building is, if they're not using it in their day-to-day yet, or maybe you're still going out different things. One tangible, what might be a really high-frequency use case that people might have touched? I mean, like so, you know, I'll start super high level like the ribbon and word or something like that. Like, you know, any menu items there, any notifications that you might get, you know, your information or, you know, your document is being stored in the cloud or something like that. You know, it's being auto saved or something. If there's a new feature. you know, in Word, notifications that might help you understand how to use that feature. So these are all places where content design comes in, helping teach you about new features, you know, helping inform you of, you know, features that you did know about that have been moved elsewhere, and, you know, just basically introducing you to, you know, what you can do in any given app. So that's, like, super high-level, right? But one of the more interesting things that my team is working on right now is called CoPilot, which is basically... the integration of AI capabilities into Microsoft products. And so those copilots are appearing in a number of different apps, as well as copi You can go use it right now. And if you've never used chat GPT, I mean, it's a very similar experience, like putting a prompt into a Microsoft app or copi and being able to have it give you information related to that prompt. That's awesome. Yeah, when I've heard more and more, I don't know if Stephanie, if you've heard this in the Seattle area, people are like, oh gosh, I'm gonna need to upscale in Microsoft co-pilot, like our companies to hire some workshops on that. Like I feel like coming down the road, this is being filmed in February, 2024. So we'll see all this summer, but I love, and I think a lot of people who are hearing this will probably have experienced Chachipiti. Actually, it's only 14% of the US, which is pretty wild. We're in their bubbles. When... Yeah. I'd love to unpack a little bit like what are copilots because I do think this is gonna be more and more the future or I know Copilot is a product but that the concept of ChatGPT is one thing which is great. I think Copilot takes it in my mind to another level. I don't know if you'd agree with that. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I really, I mean, the idea of a Copilot is, I don't want to say broad, but I mean, it's like, it is a way of helping make you more productive, faster, you know, helping you embrace your creativity in Microsoft products. For example, like in Word, you know, Copilot in Word, you might say, you know, draft a... blog post about things you might want to see in two days in Israel or something like that. I mean, really broad. And it can really help you get started and kind of seed. I think of it as a brainstorming tool. That's one of many things that it can do. I feel like it can also help get you unstuck if you're in Word and you're really struggling with how you want to say something. you know, highlight it, say rewrite the sentence, you know, in a way that, uh, you know, a five-year-old can understand it or something. I mean, you can use them prompts, you know, an LLM with, with anything really, it's, it's up to you. It's like such an empowering tool because, you know, it's all about your creativity, you know, and you know, what you're telling the system to do is ultimately what you're going to get. But, uh, to what you, to what you just said, like upscaling on, you know, uh, LLMs, GPTs and you know, all the rest, I think this is like a fundamentally, new way of interacting with technology, it's like deterministic computing, right? Because, you know, we're no longer necessarily the technology creators, like truly the user is in charge creating their own tech, like, you know, through prompting, like, you know, they are determining the output that they're getting from the system. And I think that is just super, super exciting. Like, I think that's one of the highlights for me of, you know, of doing this type of work is, build the tone of the interface and stuff like that, but also helping users understand how to use it to the best of their ability to get what they want from it. Absolutely. Yeah, well, and forgive me this comparison, but the clippy days, like when you talk about something that's like offering new ideas or like in your workflow of a document, I remember annoying but cute friend that I was only willing to leave the screen. Excuse me if that is offensive, I hope not. It's not at all. Like there's so much nostalgia around Clippy. Trust me, even internally, even internally at Microsoft, like, you know, Clippy backgrounds and, you know, like just, I mean, Christmas sweaters. I mean, really, like the whole thing, the whole thing. Like we're all, I feel like the world, what the world learned, like after Clippy went away is like, oh, that actually really was sweet. You know, it was good. It was kind of sweet. Like it was, you know, a little bit, maybe much at times or something like that. You know, I think there were some things that were off about, you know, Clippy's tone and, you know, there were definitely lessons learned there, but like ultimately Clippy was there to be supportive and be helpful. And so, you know, I don't know. Like the hope is that Co-Pilot will help you do many of those same things without feeling maybe as, oh man, I can't. I can't insult Clippy. I can't throw Clippy under the bus. Like, yeah, anyway, without some of Clippy's drawbacks. what I said, yeah, I was more, how do you think your work and your team's work has evolved beyond, Clippy's capacity was a certain place. You know, how, like co-pilots are in a totally different realm in my mind. What are some of those big differentiators that you see? Yeah, I mean, gosh, there's so many. I'm trying to pick out a couple to highlight. I mean, Clippy was ultimately an interaction with Microsoft, right? And Copilot will be too, question mark, but only in as much as Copilot is embedded in our products. There is, like I said, it's deterministic computing. So the user is automatically like, has so much more control over their experience of the product than they would have if we were designing the entire interaction through something like Clippy. So there are parts of the experience that we have control over, and there are parts that the user has much more control over now, i.e. the output that's generated by their prompt. And so... I think helping find ways to support the user to get the outcome that they want, like I said, is super important with this type of computing. That's awesome. Yeah, I would agree. One, you mentioned earlier at the top of this kind of like workflows and how you and your team think about different strings and things. Can you give us an example of like building a feature or kind of like the teams you interact with, kind of that stuff? Yeah, I mean, it's gosh, it's so dependent on like which team we're interacting with, but I would say, uh, I don't, we're very cross disciplinary for sure. You know, we work with engineering, we work with research, we work, we work with PM design. I would say PM and design are probably the two disciplines that we work with the most, um, you know, and then, you know, kind of research and, uh, and engineering as adjuncts, but, um, you know, the, the work process is so dependent based on the team. So sometimes we're sitting in on design sprints, and we're sprinting. We're surging right alongside design to come up with new ways of interacting with a specific feature or ideas like that. And sometimes we're supporting experimentation alongside design and research. And then there's also bug fixes, because it's technology. Somebody, there's a string out there that we didn't realize was kind of hanging out in code and it was sort of an edge case. And now we realize that maybe this is appearing more than we expected it to. And so we have to go fix it or something like that. So it's just like, it's very varied, like day in, day out. But... I'd say a lot of our content designers are just in PM sinks. PM and design sinks a lot, just working alongside people to build the features that are being built, whatever they may be, whether it's a web app or Copilot. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, and are you designing the roadmap? Is someone else? Like, how do you know what is the next brick or the next part of the brick? such a good question. We're really adherent to our feature teams roadmap. So it's a matter of, obviously we have brand vision, brand strategy, and stuff like that happens at very high levels. Those get turned in to OKRs at lower levels and stuff like that. And leadership and then product and feature teams work together to kind of craft a roadmap. to figure out where, either gaps in product or something like that. I feel like this is true of any technology company, quite frankly, but gaps in product or new opportunities in product, based on contact with customers or technical capacity or something like that, that we can build out in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, can you tell me some metrics of success potentially or things you're really proud of that have happened? Gosh, yeah, I feel like I had a feeling and I was like, oh, you know, what are we using as our metrics of success? And I know, I think I alluded to this earlier, but some of our biggest metrics right now are customer satisfaction. Like really, that's something like as we, like in particular, as we release Copilot, it's just so important to build like these AI driven experiences around. customers, you know, like, you know, are they, do they feel that they're more productive? You know, are they having a good experience with co-pilot? You know, like, what are their feelings about, you know, using AI, is giving them new ideas or something like that. So those are like the type of metrics that we're really using to judge our success at this point. You know, and I'm sure there's like a broader answer to this. And, you know, somebody working in a PMR research capacity, you know, might have other ideas, but honestly, like as far as my content design team is concerned, that's a lot of what we're looking at. No, that totally makes sense. Absolutely. Are there any surprises or challenges that you met along the way that you're like, whoa, didn't see that coming? Oh man, I mean, I feel like. I feel like maybe the floodgates opened in spring of last year or something like that with building Copilot. And I think I, again, I think I mentioned this earlier, but it has been a bit of an experience of building the plane as you fly it because LLNs and GPTs are new to consumers. I don't think there's any... beating around that bush. Like, you know, it's not something that was in common vocabulary before, about a year ago. And so coming up with, you know, what, like, how can users use these integrations in our products, you know, and how can these integrations help make our customers more successful? Like, what does that look like? You know, so I think I don't want to say it's been messy. I think all tech is messy. I don't think anybody would necessarily disagree with me on that. It's been complex. Yeah, it's been complex. I feel like teams across Microsoft who are working on Co-pilot or similar AI integrations are having to collaborate faster and more effectively, more efficiently than they may have been asked to in the past. Tech has always moved fast, but AI moves faster. that has necessitated some process change. And it's just, I feel like we're iterating those processes alongside iterating the product itself and just finding what works for us. Yeah. Yeah, so interesting. Are there things that you've learned along the way from this project over? I mean, Copilot coming out. Are there things you feel like you've been upscaling in or other learnings? Gosh, I just feel like you could always know more. I feel like I have barely scraped the surface of, in terms of my knowledge of AI, I know just barely enough to be dangerous and enough to talk with semi-confidence in rooms where we're describing what my team is doing and stuff like that. So, man, yeah. Like... I would really like to learn more about AI myself. And maybe build something myself. Fortunately, Microsoft has a lot of opportunities for upscaling in that space. And it's something that is on my priority list to do barring my meeting schedule. I'm doing the job of helping you execute. You said, okay, all right. When you think about where your part of the AI field is headed, you just articulated that you're interested in some other projects as well. Like when you think about co-pilots, when you think about people integrating AI into existing Microsoft product suites or future product suites, where do you feel like that field is heading? Oh my gosh, such a good question. You know, I don't know. This is very like, I am speaking very much as like, you know, my own human being right now and not like a spokesperson for Microsoft at all. But, you know, just based on what we're seeing with, you know, the world of AI and stuff like that, I see things like converging more and more over time, you know, like, will there be? separate products like, you know, for each one of these individual things or, you know, will there be like one thing that sort of like does it all for you or something like that? This is not, like I said, this is not anything that Microsoft is working on. Certainly, like I have no inside information. Let me be clear. But yeah, I just I do see things like consolidating more over time. You know, I don't know that but this is again, this is supposition and just sort of what I'm seeing across the industry in terms of like, a thing that does a bunch of things for you as opposed to just one thing. Integrated rather than isolated? Totally. I feel like the next question is supposed to be about how is this different from your understanding of the field when you first joined it? But I think let's wait for those types of questions so we can share around things. I think one of the coolest things that I hear about listening to what you're currently working on is like you are literally shaping how people are processing and consuming these products in new ways. And I think that's so cool. that is exciting. Yeah. mean, my question might be like, you must have like a God complex a little bit as like your work is literally changing, or just a little bit. I would, it's so tangible to what users are experiencing with these tools like right away. Like, how do you feel as you shape that world? Yeah, I mean, it is like, I don't wanna say intimidating, but it feels like a lot of responsibility, you know? And I think, I think my lucky stars, like, you know, that my, like everybody on my team is just amazing. They're amazing. Like, so, you know, we are really, like, if I could tell you one thing, you know, there are humans behind your technology. Like there are humans that are creating your technology, like real. you. and they want and most of us want the best for you and like, you know, we want to see you succeed and do the thing that you want to do and stuff like that. And, you know, we're building your products with ethics in mind, you know, with like, you know, thinking of all of these things that you would want thought about, you know, if you were creating it yourself. So it does it does feel like a lot of responsibility, but, you know, I'm very grateful for. the culture of Microsoft, the culture of my team, that's allowing us to ask tough questions along the way. That's amazing. Yeah, well, and I'm just curious, like we'll jump into your career stuff, I promise in just a second, but like are there, what is the size of the team? Is it mostly designed? Like how many engineer research? Like when you think about like the scope of teams, I'm trying to like map out in my mind. Yeah, yeah. So I have seven folks on my immediate team who report to me. And then those seven content designers work across teams of varying size, really. So some of them, I would say they probably, this is, again, remembering from my IC days, kind of the scope of designers and PMs who I used to work with, probably a dozen. you know, PMs and designers that they regularly interact with, like some of them more, you know, like, you know, the folks who work on like, Hope I Lit for Word or something like that. You know, that's a very large team, you know, and a very cohesive team, you know, with a lot of people, you know, just, you know, kind of collaborating side by side, you know, day over day and stuff like that. So, and, you know, a really good, like, cross-discipline. collaboration too, so a lot of different disciplines integrated. Yeah, when I'm also realizing like your title, senior content design manager, most people may not have heard of the word or like the phrase content designer. Would you unpack for us what that what that means for you? Yeah, this is such a great question. Like I said, remind me if I said this earlier, but the discipline of content design has really evolved over time. So it used to be UX writing. We'd come in after design was complete and just add in strings and our work would be done. But. over time the industry has realized, I think, we've all come to a realization that like, hey, we really need to start thinking about content as design, it is design, it's just design with words as opposed to design with components and iconography and color and all these other tools that UX designers have available to them. So I think of it as a sub-discipline within design where we were working specifically with language. And so therefore, Hence, we work side by side, very early on, in design sprints and experimentation, as soon as we need any kind of placeholder or anything to actually influence design and influence interaction models and stuff like that. So to me, it's really important that content design is brought in early because, yeah, sometimes we do get brought in for UX writing and it's... It just compromises our ability to kind of look across apps. And if we're looking to make an experience coherent across endpoints or something like that, it limits our ability maybe to do that and all sorts of stuff. So it really, please bring your content designers in early. That's what I'm telling you right now. I love it. Okay, well, let's go back in time. What has been your career path to get you to becoming a senior content design manager? Yeah, yeah. and eventually realized I didn't really like marketing. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for anybody who's like overly in marketing. I like, I think it's super interesting, but you know, I'm a content person at heart and I really wanted something that was going to be more focused on content and had kind of wandered in a marketing because I was greater writing. And knew that I didn't want to become a marketing director, any of those next steps. And did this very random Google search for content writer, Seattle. Um, spoiler, this is like not maybe don't find your next job this way, but serendipity, um, there was a role at Microsoft for, uh, a writer for Cortana. And, uh, in my free time, I had started doing playwriting just because I thought it was interesting. Uh, and I had also been a vendor for Microsoft for a period of time. Uh, you know, it kind of in between some of my nonprofit gigs and it. just sounded like the most interesting thing in the entire world to me. It was like right for the next generation of AI. And I had never felt that kind of fire lit in me, like around a job description before. And I was like, what's gonna happen if I like, you know, apply and then, you know, don't get it, like big deal, you know, like whatever, I'll apply for it. And I wound up landing the role specifically because I had playwriting experience and therefore knew how to write conversation. And yeah. Don't regret it at all. I was a writer for Cortana for about a year. I was the lead UX writer back when it was still UX writing for the accessibility UX in Windows. I worked on a project called Personality Chat where we designed bot personalities that developers could use in bots they were building on Microsoft Bot Framework. Worked on the inclusive language feature in Editor, which is available across several apps, word included. And I was also the lead UX writer again when it was UX writing. for PowerPoint and Word. So yeah, that's kind of, that's the brief sketch. And then actually I went on parental leave to have my son and, you know, started connecting with my manager as I was preparing for my return to the office. And he knew that I was interested in becoming a people manager. And he said, hey, you know, what do you think of returning as a people manager? And I thought to myself, well, it's gonna be a whole new job anyway, after, you know, being away for... you know, however long I was off, like eight months or something like that, because I took a little bit of extra time, uh, to spend with my son. I was like, might as well just learn a whole new role. So, um, yeah, I jumped right in and shortly after that, um, you know, gained two more people and then two more people after that. And yeah, now sitting with a team of, of seven amazing women, by happy accident, I have an all female team. So it's, uh, pretty cool. not know that. Well, that's such a cool path and I did not, I don't know, there was a lot of pieces of that I did not know. Can you remind folks what the Cortana product was all about? Yeah, Cortana was Microsoft's digital assistant, much like Siri's, Apple's, or Alexa's, Amazon's. So it was basically meant to be your everyday AI assistant. So I did a lot of just one-off strings, like conversational writing for Cortana. I remember one of the strings I wrote very early on was an answer to, does Santa exist, or something like that. You know, and it was, you know, yeah, it was really fun. And I love writing conversation, like, you know, voice design, as you're probably aware is still like a still is and, you know, will always be a love of mine. So it was a good fit for whereas at the time, for sure. Yeah, when you're touching on conversational design, which I think some people still, is still fascinating and happy hours that people are like, oh, people work on the backend of these systems. Like, wait a minute. It is still shocking. But when people are interacting with these systems, could you share a little bit kind of about, I think this might help also with people understanding like content design, but like conversational design, like how. Could you give just a little background about what that looks like on the building side? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I think it depends very much on like the specific product that you're working on. But you know, in the olden days, like, you know, voice design and conversation design involved a lot of like, flow mapping and branching and, you know, like figuring out, you know, the golden path that you wanted the user to travel down, but also, you know, understand what the user, trying to figure out what the user was actually asking for, accounting for potential dead ends, handoff to a live person, if something like that was needed or necessary. I definitely recall working on some very, very complex flows with like... you know, okay, here's five different options that the user could have, and underneath each one of these is five more options or something like that. And you can just imagine that conversations like that like amplify exponentially as you get further and further down in individual branches. So it was honestly, that was something that I really enjoyed about it. Like, I love that type of complexity and not just that, but like... the specific challenges of conversational complexity where you kind of have to anticipate, what is the user gonna want now? What are they gonna say next? Like, what if they say this? What if they say that? So it was really just a lot of questions and answers in your own head. Having a conversation with yourself about what the user could possibly do at any given moment. And that was just really fascinating to me. It was a good fit. I still like voice design quite a bit. Yeah, such a cool field. So you're now in a management role, but what advice might you give? So let's say that someone's listening to this and they're doing something completely different. They maybe want to pivot into AI. They want to learn more about careers in this field. What advice or steps might you give for them if they're like, Stephanie's got the coolest job. Like, how do I get there? Like, that's for me. What advice might you give them? reach out to me on LinkedIn, first of all, you know, like, and I'm happy to like talk to you about it and you know, like give you any advice that I might have to give, you know, obviously no promises, I can't, you know, promise to get you in the door or anything like that, but you know, ah, this, I'm trying to decide if I want to say this, I think I do. Really, it's just like follow your passion. You know, I could have never known that like theater writing was what was gonna get me in the door at Microsoft. But I totally get that it is necessary to be practical, especially in a job market like this sometimes, about wanting to earn skills that you really think will get you a job. So I get it, I completely hear that, but try not to do that at the exclusion of things that really get your heart pumping and set a fire underneath you, you know what I mean? And I speak from a very privileged position of having done that and kind of the dominoes fell and I landed in a very excellent place that I really enjoy. At the same time, I feel like dabbling is just always a good idea. If there's something that you want to learn more about, go try and figure out where you can learn more about it. There's bound to be something within that. range of somewhere on the spectrum between this will definitely get me a job and this is my true passion, where you might be able to find something along that spectrum that just really excites you. Excellent advice. Yeah, well, and if someone is hearing this and thinking about how to differentiate themselves or otherwise, do you think that a playwriting background was a really good kind of one-to-one mapping or when you think about candidates today, what might you be looking for? Hmm, that's such a good question. You know, I didn't mention this earlier, but after I landed in the field of technology, I sort of realized that I didn't really feel like I knew how to communicate across disciplines as well as I wanted to. And so I went and got a master's in science and human centered design and engineering at the University of Washington. And I would say that, you know, not that getting a master's degree is fully necessary, but I think it has certainly helped me. It's definitely benefited my communication with partners and my understanding of the various fields that exist within Microsoft. So never discount. I still sometimes see people devaluing education and emphasizing industry work and work in the field and stuff like that. I would say never discount the value of getting an education. So if that's like, if academia is like where you feel that you're polled and where you feel like that's the right environment for me to learn, some of these different things that I wanna learn, definitely don't discount that. But also, there's equal, certainly equal- value or nearly equal value and, you know, connecting with people across the field who do the exciting work that you think you might want to do. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's... Yeah, yeah. Um, well, and when you think about, because I do think there's so many different paths into our, uh, ridiculous, potentially overwhelming. Um, when you look at candidates, or I was talking to someone the other day, how he thinks about different candidates and, you know, does he weigh academics towards projects, other skill sets, when you think about, I don't know that you're not saying that you're hiring or otherwise, but like, when you talk to candidates, like what are things that you were like? whoa, she's got this or like this is a huge differentiator. What are those kinds of pieces that you might look for? Um, you know, like I think any good UX portfolio, like, you know, if you have a good, um, for, I'll speak to content design specifically, obviously, because that's, you know, my area of expertise, but, um, you know, we're not so much looking for, you know, have you done a big project and seen a lot of success or something like that? We're really looking for how you think. And so if you can tell a story that helps us understand how you think about a problem. and how you might approach solving it and who you're going to work with to solve it, I think that's the most important thing. If you can craft a good story, again, that's kind of a huge part of content design, right? So like start with your own work, like start crafting a story about, you know, a problem you faced, like, you know, how you figured out what your resources were. to overcome it, who you worked with, to overcome it, how you negotiated obstacles and stuff like that. And if it's related specifically to building UX, all the better, but there are multiple ways that those types of skills are transferable across disciplines. So if all you've ever done is manage a nonprofit or something like that, or build a website or something like that, that's not specifically building technology. experiences in a specific product or something like that, then you can still show that type of thinking and that type of progress. So I guess that's what I would say. And as for like, you know, was it a one-to-one mapping? Or was my experience a one-to-one mapping? Like, you know, maybe for Cortana, it was a relatively good match to have written conversation via theater and things like that. But I think it's really rare. that any job is a one-to-one mapping with your skills. I think that's actually quite rare. So what you're really hoping to do is showcase what you've been through in the past and what you've done in the past that you can apply in your current role. And your employer is just sitting there hoping to judge the best they can, whether or not you're right about those skills being able to apply. So I don't know, I guess that's what I'd say about that. Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, and you mentioned HCDE, or we'll link UW University of Washington's program for that. Such good things. Are there other specific internships, certificates, kind of boot camps, or things that you have, some of your friends go through that you might recommend? Or I don't mean to put you on the spot, but. that's fine. That's fine. I'll definitely think about it and I will send you any links that I can think of. The only thing that comes to mind right now is like UX collective, you know, and I feel like, you know, there's a there's a program at Seattle University, I think that a peer of mine is a professor in but I can't remember the name of the program right now. So I'm happy to kind of like source those links and send them to you for sure. Yeah, of course. Cool. Well, are there any, I could sit and talk to you for so long Stephanie. Are there advice and takeaways, thinking through what you're currently doing, what lights you up, your background, any advice or takeaways you might give a listener? Hmm, like if they're trying to get into like an AI related field or something like that Yeah, I think a lot of listeners might already be in this field and kind of navigating their path or wanting to pivot hard or looking at the next job. I think there's a, yeah. I would say, as a person who pivoted pretty hard, in roughly the middle of their career, no pivot is unachievable. Like, that was my experience. I went from a marketing manager at a nonprofit to a writer at Microsoft for Cortana, and that is not completely unheard of, at least in my discipline. And I know designers and PMs and people in... research, certainly, like people in other disciplines at Microsoft also come from a variety of backgrounds. So I would say, no matter what type of background you come from, everybody has something to offer to technology because like I said, we're just a bunch of humans working on your technology products and we need more humans, like more good humans to work on technology. And people with... with great ideas and great perspective come from a variety of backgrounds and a variety of different fields. So no matter where you are in your career or what amount of transferable skills you feel like you already have, start connecting with people either in the field or adjacent to the field and kind of putting together a rough sketch of what you might need to learn to get where you think you might want to go and be willing to make adjustments along the way. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, last few questions here. What resources, when people are thinking about upskilling and so forth, things are moving so fast, right? Again, putting you on the spot a little bit, but what resources do you consume? Where do you get your content when you think about upskilling and learning? Gosh, I mean, you know, I'm very fortunate in the sense that like I work for Microsoft and so there are a lot of upskilling resources within Microsoft that I use personally that might not be available to somebody who is listening who is external. So I won't talk about those but you know, I will say like, use, use everything you know like. Go ask like an LLM, go ask chat GPT, like how can I learn about this or something like that? Like that is honestly a great way of using like AI technology. Like, hey, you're an LLM, tell me how I can learn more about AI, like I'm not kidding. It will likely provide you with a great answer. You know. I mean, my approach to upskilling is like relatively casual. Like, I mean, go on Meetup if that's available in your area and look for industry specific events around AI. Go to those presentations or something like that. Look for things on Google, boot camps or something are available like everywhere now. So again, I'm totally happy to put together some basic links, but I feel like, again, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here because I work for Microsoft and the majority of my learning about AI comes from internal and tools. It's amazing. It's awesome. I love it, but also means I'm less familiar with stuff outside of Microsoft. I will ding you on your brownie points. That's what happens there. No, but I think, and you just gotta keep asking them because I was just using perplexity the other day and I was like, oh, whoa, something updated. Like, wait a minute, it's giving me like better answers. I was asking for citations and it just started spitting out. Like, here are some citations I'd recommend to them. I was like, oh, peaceful. Oh, peaceful, excellent. Like, okay, gotta, gotta get them. Okay, so if people are hearing this and they wanna learn more about you and Co-Pilot, Where should they go? I would say like great place to start is copi That's kind of the sweet spot for experiencing Copilot. And then check me out on LinkedIn, feel free to connect. I'm definitely open to that and if folks want to chat more, then come at me. That's great. I love talking about what I do. I enjoy working at Microsoft and I'm happy to share knowledge with anybody who feels like they want it. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure talking to you and learning more about co-pilots. I feel like it's gonna take space in my head to continue thinking about like the cool work you do and how expansive this stuff is just in the next few years is pretty mind boggling. So. it's really cool. I'm so grateful to have landed where I am right now. So, yeah. Well, you rock. They're lucky to have you. Thanks. All right. Well, thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day. Cheers. yeah, thanks you two. Oh gosh, was that fun. Did you enjoy that episode as much as I did? 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