Design strategist, UX expert, and practical dreamer focusing on product innovation for over 15 years.

I spent the last six years in Microsoft thinking about and designing for the future of productivity in its broadest sense; first at Office Labs – a bleeding edge technology + design team, then on a strategy team and now I’m working on creating the next experiences of Office across a variety of devices, input methods and platforms.

In 1999 I co-founded and managed one of the first Digital Product Design Agencies in Israel – Max. Interactive.  Max. Interactive  provided comprehensive solutions to companies -  coupling user centered design methods with business focused approach to create products that people love and companies value.

My career path has also led me to be a leading creative force in Start-up trenches where she happily served, and to the winding roads of designing products and creating product strategies as a solo consultant.
I lived, worked and studied in multiple cultures and places around the world including Israel, Finland, Italy, London, San Francisco and now Seattle. I hold a Bachelor degree in Visual communications from Bezalel Academy of Art and design in Jerusalem, and a Masters degree in Interaction design from Interaction design institute, Ivrea in Italy.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthkikingil

Microsoft, UX designer, design strategist and design lead

• 2013-Now Microsoft Office. UX design and strategy, Office Word
• 2012 Microsoft Office. Design strategist and UX designer for multiple products focusing on product innovation
• 2008-2012 Office Labs: UX designer and design lead in Office labs, a bleeding edge Design+Technology group.

Consultant, User Experience designer developing and defining future services for the wireless environment .

Max. Interactive ltd. Co-founder and creative director of a digital products design consultancy, combining user-centred design together with a business focused approach to ensure that the design will increase the end-user's satisfaction while serving the client's business goals. My role was divided between operational work as a manager and professional work as a designer, design mentor and supervisor. I initiated creative processes, managed relationships with clients and supervised production

• 1997-1998: Corporate art director. I lead a team of Creative professionals and programmers, being responsible for Zapa's GUI, Company communications and website.
• 1996-1997: Creative director, Interaction designer and content production manager of Broderbund's "The PrintShop LiveMail": a multimedia greeting cards authoring tool with visual associative search engine (VSE)
• 1995-1996: Art director and interaction designer for CD titles for News Corp. England. (Including the Frankfurt book fair gold award winning "Makers of the 20th Century" CD ROM title)
  
  

Support lecturer at University of Washington, Human centered design and engineering (Capstone - HCDE 593),  Seattle Washington
http://www.hcde.uw.edu/

Microsoft Liaison and Course Mentor at the Media innovation Lab at IDC Hertzeliya, Israel
http://milab.idc.ac.il/.

Juror at Spark Design & Architecture awards – App design competition
http://www.sparkawards.com/

Sketching in Hardware 2 , A summit on the design of/with physical computing toolkits , San Francisco, California, US (co-host of the conference, speaker). http://www.sketching07.com/

INDEX:AWARD 2005 , An exhibition which presented the top nominated designs for INDEX: AWARD design contest. Copenhagen , Denmark , featuring "Circles of Care" project

INTERACT 2005 , Tenth IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Rome , Italy , featuring BuddyBeads project http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/interact2005/programme.html#

CIRCULAR, event and exhibition by Domus Magazine, Salone Del Mobile 2005, Milano, Italy

Debate, communicate, educate: New media channels at your service in Communicating European Research 2005 , a series of articles and republished speeches from the Conference, Springer 2007

Affective is effective: How information appliances can mediate relationships within communities and increase one's social effectiveness in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, , volume 10, Springer-Verlag London Ltd, April 2006

BuddyBeads: Techno-Jewelry for non verbal communication within Teenager Girls Groups in MobileHCI'05 Proceedings , 2005

BuddyBeads: Techno-Jewelry for non verbal communication within Teenager Girls Groups in Interact '05 proceedings , 2005

Opportunity events (Pending)

Invocation Control over Keyboard user interface (Pending)

Using scrollbars as live notification areas (Pending)

Organizing Unstructured research within a document (Pending)

Aggregated view of content with presentation according to content type

Hash tag management in a microblogging infrastructure

Programmable computer graphic objects