Resumen
In May 1998, Microsoft Corp.'s usability organization celebrated its 10th anniversary with a party at the Microsoft Museum. This opportunity is welcomed by its employees to reflect on its growth and history. At Microsoft, usability work is performed by a group of roughly 100 people, including full-time employees, temporary employees and contractor staff. Product work is done by separate usability organizations in many different areas including children's products, Web products, hand-held devices, office products and operating system platforms. Microsoft products are generally intended for a very wide diversity of customers. This range leads to different challenges from those faced by usability engineers for products with a narrowly focused target user group. Microsoft develops some software products to be components within other manufacturers' products. In these cases, such as hand-held computers or computers in car radios, manufacturers add value by designing their own hardware packages and sometimes additional software functionality. Usability staff must work in a way that is specific about the Microsoft components of the product and generic about any additional components and the hardware. At times this may require working across corporate boundaries and with different corporate cultures toward a common usability goal. INSETS: Untitled; Case Study: Home-Based Systems; Case Study: Working with Children.