Sabine McLain, UX and UI extraordinaire, is no stranger to working with Microsoft. She’s worked closely with just about every UI- and UX-related acronym Microsoft has had where Windows is concerned. Vista? Yep. Windows 7? Mmmhmm – and now, Windows 8. Taking a look at her online resume today, I noticed an interesting update. Apparently, she’s a (if not the) key-figure in the creation of, “a new generation tool for managing the work on Windows 8.” You guessed it – WorkTrack.

As written by Sabine in her resume, WorkTrack is, “a dashboard application to be used by the Windows 8 team for tracking work on the next operation system” which is, “aimed at being a low threshold, easy-to-use environment that facilitates communication as well as tracking for the teams.” As for what Sabine lists as her contributions to the creation of WorkTrack:

- Generated the original concept.
- Defining and Designing Interactions
- Defining and Designing Guides
- Execute UI visual design and brand explorations.

She also makes mention of two internal tools: Product Studio and TFS (Team Foundation Server), which are tools used within Microsoft to track issues, manage test cases, and generally aid in, “dogfooding,” which essentially means testing builds of software they’re currently developing.

Unfortunately, there are no images or any additional information about this tool or any other Windows 8-related content on her site or in her resume. Regardless, we have enough insight to see that Microsoft is thinking big enough with Windows 8 to have a completely new work-tracking tool created from the ground-up by the apparently well-credentialed and well-seasoned UX/UI veteran, Sabine McLain.

-Stephen

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