Inside Microsoft's Building 87, which includes a lab with models of body parts that are used to help test products and a quiet room to measure product sounds
Context & Ripple Effects
This tour closes out a spring 2019 sequence in which Microsoft progressively opened its Redmond facilities to the press: The Verge visited the Envisioning Center's prototype work in May, and Digital Trends traced how the Surface Hub 2S came out of the hardware design labs in April. Building 87 adds the unglamorous layer beneath those demos — the body-part models used to test products against human ergonomics and the quiet room where product sounds are measured.
First-order effects
- Microsoft gains a credibility asset for its Surface-era hardware push: published evidence of physical testing infrastructure (acoustic measurement, anatomical test models) that supports the build quality claims behind products like the Surface Hub line.
Second-order effects
- Rival device makers face a growing norm of lab transparency — Facebook already opened its Building 8 moonshot lab to CNET in 2017 — so companies that keep facilities closed look less rigorous by comparison, nudging more press tours and facility reveals across the industry.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, specialized physical testing infrastructure becomes part of the hardware talent moat: as component supply chains commoditize, proprietary labs for acoustics, ergonomics, and materials are what separate premium device makers from assemblers, and showcasing them becomes standard marketing.
The trend: Big tech companies are converting once-secretive hardware labs into publicity assets, using facility tours to signal device-quality differentiation as software features become easier to copy.