Microsoft hires former Adobe employee to lead its design team

Microsoft continues to reconfigure itself as primarily a services company that isn’t all that concerned with what platforms users prefer in terms of actually employing its applications and offerings. Today, the company revealed that it has hired former Adobe VP of Experience Design Michael Gough to lead design of Office 365 and other key software applications, signalling that an even more Adobe-like philosophy when it comes to software and services is indeed imminent. Redmond has shown under new CEO Satya Nadella that it doesn’t hold its own operating systems, on any kind of hardware, nearly as precious as it once did. The recent introduction of Outlook for iOS and Android is a good example, as are the native Office apps for those platforms. Office 365 clearly aims to provide Microsoft services wherever users happen to be working, and Microsoft poaching a key architect of Adobe’s Creative Cloud experience design seems like a good way to push forward with that agenda.