Ralf Groene Retires from Microsoft

Ralf Groene, the legendary lead designer of Microsoft Surface, announced today that he has retired after over 17 years at the software giant.

“I’m happy to share that I’m now retired,” he wrote this morning on LinkedIn.

Groene was most recently the corporate vice president of Design, Windows and Devices. In that role, he was responsible for the design of Surface, Xbox, and HoloLens and Microsoft’s Windows and Android OS experiences. Previously, he was a senior creative director in Surface (2011 to 2020) and head of industrial design across Surface, Phones, and Xbox (2015 to 2020). A fan of the minimalist Bauhaus design, he started his career as a toolmaker at Volkswagen AG in Wolfsburg, Germany and worked with Hartmut Esslinger at frogdesign.

Groene had an early success with the Microsoft Arc Mouse, but I will always remember him most for his early work bringing Surface to market. As Steven Sinofsky notes in Hardcore Software, Groene led the Surface hardware design team, and he was directly responsible for the iconic tablet 2-in-1 form factor that still defines this product line today.

“If we were casting a movie for an industrial designer, Ralf would be perfect,” he writes of the early days of Surface. “Ralf and the design team were cycling through prototypes of sizes and overall form factors at an incredible pace.”

Ralf was one of the good guys. I can’t wait to see what he does next.