Jan Miksovsky Email & Phone Number

See https://weborigami.org

San Francisco, California, Us

As an architect on Salesforce's user interface platform, I guided the design and implementation of the basic UI elements used across Salesforce and its wide developer audience. This took my long-standing interest in building UI with better components and applied to enterprise software.That included working closely with the web browser vendors to ensure that evolving web standards support a vibrant ecosystem: the people who design and build user interface components, and the organizations and companies that use them to build great applications.

I cofounded Component Kitchen when I saw that a small but critical addition to web browsers — the ability to reuse user interface components across products and companies — would open up a wave of web user interface innovation and fundamentally change the economics of software development.My interest in UI components is grounded in a belief that they're a critically important and under-examined aspect of UX design. Building sites and apps with well-designed UI components allows for experiences that are far more reliable, flexible, fast, and delightful to use.That belief led to the Elix project (https://component.kitchen/elix), a comprehensive open-source library of general-purpose user interface components. Since joining Salesforce in December 2019, my work through Component Kitchen is focused on developing and maintaining the Elix project.

I took on design projects for consumer applications that held potential for user experience innovation. These projects ranged from games to hardware, but generally focused on web or mobile consumer products.I did most of the user interface design in code, and found that a deeper understanding of the technology supporting a software experience allows for a better and more effective design process. As a result, I often ended up doing some or all of the front-end web development work for clients.From 2007–2013, I independently developed and maintained an open source web user interface framework called QuickUI. This framework was built around the notion that user interfaces can be quickly and reliably constructed from pieces called components, and I made extensive use of this framework in producing reliable, cross-platform web applications on tight schedules. This work was the progenitor of the Elix project developed by my second startup, Component Kitchen.

Seattle, Washington, Us

I cofounded Cozi to help families orchestrate the complexities of modern household life.I enjoy the challenge of designing fundamentally new products, and Cozi turned out as a great example of a product based on user research rather than technologic capabilities. The early in-home research I conducted led to the realization that family homes constitute a unique environment with dynamics and needs that are ignored by most companies (who tend to treat families, if they think of families at all, as tiny businesses). From this insight, it was possible to approach existing domains such as online calendars from a completely new angle, designing features specifically for parents and children, and addressing every level of the product from visual aesthetics to back-end capabilities towards the needs of families.Cozi went on to win a broad range of parenting and consumer tech awards: Parents' Choice Awards, National Parenting Center Seal of Approval awards, and a number of best app awards for families and parents.Beyond Cozi's design and technology accomplishments, I'm particularly proud of the family-friendly startup culture I seeded and nutured at Cozi.

Redmond, Washington, Us

In the course of my career at Microsoft, I handled every aspect of software design from micro-interactions to conceiving and launching new products. User interface design was just getting its start as a distinct occupational role when I began at Microsoft in 1988, and it was exciting to watch the field grow into an established discpline during my time there.A short summary of my product work at Microsoft includes:* Windows Vista. Vista itself ended up as only as middling Windows release, but many of its best design ideas went on to fruition in the successful Windows 7 release which followed. During my time as UX Architect on the Windows core design team, I contributed new UI design principles for the “Aero” Windows interface and promoted these across the company and to the public development community. This included collaborating on the design of user interfaces across the range of Windows feature teams: shell, networking, accessibility, user assistance, etc.* Microsoft Money. I led a radical redesign of what was then an understated Microsoft Office-style personal financial product to create truly consumer-oriented user interface that garnered many critical raves. While working on Money, I formulated a new paradigm called "inductive user interface design" that can be used as a lens through which one can evaluate the effectiveness of a user interface design, and can lead to greater empathy for the user exploring an unfamiliar or infrequently-used interface.* Windows NT “Cairo”. I worked on a team that came up with a new end-user interface model for automating operating system tasks and behavior.* "Torque" workflow automation system. An innovative communication system that went beyond email.* Microsoft Mail. Designed features for Microsoft's first email client, which evolved over time into Microsoft Outlook.In addition to direct product oversight, I mentored countless program managers and designers in growing their design skills.

B.A., Computer Science

Japanese

Education record