Microsoft Hardware Blog

(Vince Jesus from the Microsoft Model Shop)

I’m the platforms development manager on the electrical and firmware engineering team at Microsoft Hardware. One of the goals for the engineering team here is to deliver great customer experiences through our products. The design and test complexities involved in delivering a good product often get overlooked, so we thought we would give you the inside scoop on the process of making mice! Read on, and be sure to check out the videos linked below for a behind-the-scenes look at our labs.

Research and early design: The user experience and industrial design teams play a critical role in integrating findings from user research into design concepts. This runs the gamut from ergonomists poring over human factors data, to designers sanding foam to create models of a product. At our Redmond campus, we have a Model Shop that is used for creating prototypes, experimenting with design and selecting colors, materials and finishes. Check out this behind-the scenes video to get more insights of how the Model Shop is used for the development phase.

Engineering: From an engineering standpoint, we start by translating what our customers need into the functional requirements for a product. Our next step is to identify and develop the technologies and subsystems required to meet these product requirements. We have technical teams that work on engineering sub-systems for all products. These mouse teams, for example, typically focus on one aspect of the mouse functionality like wireless, surface navigation or tracking and scroll wheels. Microsoft’s BlueTrack Technology is a good example of optical engineers, integrated circuit designers, electrical engineers and reliability engineers getting together to find a way to improve tracking across more surfaces.

Testing and Final Product: At the product level, we go through a series of design, build, and test iterations starting from foam models, CAD designs and schematics. This progresses to a final product that takes into account design for manufacturability and assembly considerations. As you can see, creating a product goes beyond hardware engineers.

In upcoming posts, you’ll hear more about the testing process and technologies we use in our products. Let us know if there is any part of the product development for mice that you are interested to hear more about!