Meet the design guru trying to make Windows Phone relevant

Microsoft's Albert Shum takes a picture with a smartphone running Windows Phone software at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich in 2011

(Credit: Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)

You might not know who Albert Shum is, but it's a pretty good bet you know some of the products he helped design.

He was among the group of designers working in Nike's famed Innovation Kitchen that created the earliest prototypes that would ultimately become its Nike+ performance monitoring product line. When Microsoft hired him five years ago, he and a team cooked up the tile-based interface that was centerpiece of the company's Windows Phone debut.

Shum is a new breed of Microsoftie, a creative type that the company needs as it works to win over consumers that have learned to crave great design. As it competes against the slick styling and increasingly seamless experiences created Apple, Amazon, and Samsung, Microsoft has tried to shift away from a culture where programming chops often trump design flourishes. Shum believes he needs to help weave more "right-brained" creative thinking to a "left-brained" engineering culture.

"That's really the special sauce," said Shum, general manager of the Windows Phone Design Studio.

Microsoft has come late to the design ethos. In 1999, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates mocked the early candy-colored iMacs, quipping at a financial analyst conference,... [Read more]