See where Panos Panay and his team are creating Microsoft’s next hardware innovations

Kareem Anderson

If B87 means nothing to you as a Microsoft fan, perhaps what’s related to it might such as the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio. Building 87 is the vault-like complex mad design scientist Panos Panay and his team work in while creating new and transformative experiences, often having to do with how hard and function intertwine in a modern productivity environment.

While many fans wait for refreshed and updated versions of the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio, the team behind the hardware has opened its doors, figuratively, with a new site that looks at the various areas of B87 that have helped produce some arguably industry guiding products.

At Microsoft’s Story Labs, readers can get a neat interactive (that appears to be touch-centric) walkthrough of Building 87 that includes details of The Anechoic Chamber which serves as the buildings audio lab and doubles as the world’s record holding quietest areas. Other audio lab facts include how Microsoft the Surface team intrically evaluate mics for the hardware as well as explaining the real world stressors the team used to test speech recognition.

The B87 site is chalked full of neat tidbits on the developement process of the Surface team from looks into the study of the human head for developing HoloLens to a path for virtual teleportation. The Microsoft Story Lab on B87 is a recommended read for any Microsoft fan or Surface enthusiast.