Designer of the Metro UI for Surface departs Microsoft to join data analysis startup

Windows veteran Jensen Harris is leaving Microsoft after 16 years to join HR-based startup Textio. Harris, who had worked with on Windows, Office, and Outlook at Microsoft will start his new adventure at Textio next week after announcing his departure Thursday.

At Textio, Harris will help to find unintended biases and discrimination. The human resources-based company scans company documents, such as performance reviews and job descriptions, in search of patterns in the hopes of finding unintended biases.

"I got to play with a lot of the toys that I wanted to play with," Harris said of his time at Microsoft, where he helped build the Metro UI for Surface.

Harris was responsible for many familiar creations at Microsoft as explained on his personal site:

"I have led teams through some of the boldest and most innovative user interface projects in the world, including the Metro UI for Surface and Windows 8/8.1 tablets, the design of the modern Ribbon user interface for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote, and creation of the widely-copied e-mail user interface in Microsoft Outlook."

Certainly his talents will be missed.

Source: Re/Code

Chuong Nguyen

Chuong's passion for gadgets began with the humble PDA. Since then, he has covered a range of consumer and enterprise devices, raning from smartphones to tablets, laptops to desktops and everything in between for publications like Pocketnow, Digital Trends, Wareable, Paste Magazine, and TechRadar in the past before joining the awesome team at Windows Central. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, when not working, he likes exploring the diverse and eclectic food scene, taking short jaunts to wine country, soaking in the sun along California's coast, consuming news, and finding new hiking trails.