Where did you find the ideas for your screensavers?

"Most of my career has been driven by my interest in computer graphics. While at Boeing I worked on flight simulator technology, image processing for a defense project, and graphics for a CAD system. At Microsoft I've also worked on 3D rendering and animation tools, the Direct3D graphics library, several games, and graphics for the Office applications. The screensavers I wrote were just another aspect of this love of graphics. They were originally written during some time off from Microsoft. During the Vista ship cycle the designers removed most of the old screensavers because they didn't feel that they reflected the design sensibility of Vista. By the time this decision was made, they didn't have the time of budget to create new screensavers. At the time I was working in the Office team. When I heard about this I dusted off the screensavers I had written and offered them to the Vista team for use. They selected the ones they liked and I moved over to the Windows organization to update them to match the Windows programming guidelines and integrate them into the build.

Which challenges did you encounter when making the screensaver? Was the initial idea very different from the final software?

The only screensaver that actually started out having a clear initial idea was Aurora. This one was done after I joined the Windows team. The designers were looking for something inspired by the Aurora Borealis using the green/blue color theme of Vista. I'm still not sure how well I captured that feeling.