Over the past three years, we've published a lot of interviews on our blog.

From agencies to freelancers and startups to software development firms (in addition to local businesses who market themselves through the digital channel) there's a lot to be learned from each of these folks, no matter their occupation, interests or industry.

Today we're starting a new series that's especially close to my heart: designers who create digital products (software, websites and multi-channel experiences) on the Microsoft technology platform. Cool stuff like ASP.NET, Windows Phone, WPF and Silverlight. In each case, they also use Microsoft Windows to do their work, whether virtualized or on a dedicated Windows computer.

Microsoft Windows-based designers are an under-represented bunch. They're just as creative, diverse and skilled as Apple OS X-based designers, but for some reason, they're a segment of the digital design community who are not very vocal or well-known. My aim in running this series is to showcase some of these people and hopefully build more awareness of great designers within the Microsoft technology ecosystem.

First up is Robby Ingebretsen of Pixel Lab.

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Robby Ingebretsen. I'm a Principal at Pixel Lab. My day-to-day job is that I handle design for most of our projects and do a lot of the project management. Those two, for me at least, turn out to be somewhat related, at least in the early stages where much of the PM work is about gathering and understanding requirements. I also do a lot of "polished" front end development (CSS, XAML styling, etc.)

If you have concurrent projects, do you pass off any aspect of management, design and/or front-end development to somebody else or do you magically balance all three responsibilities at once?

Everyone does a little bit of everything. Adam Kinney (of other principals) is also a great front end dev. We're all pretty experienced project managers when needed and each of us manages the projects that came through us. So if I find a project, I'll manage it. If Kevin or Adam takes a project, they'll manage it and so on. It's pretty organic.

What computer hardware are you using?

I have two Macbook Pros, one of which is dedicated to Windows and the other is dedicated to OSX. I plug them into a 27" Apple Cinema display. My hardware setup looks like I raided an Apple store.

What about software?

This is where it gets interesting. I'm in Windows about 80% of the time. Most of that is on my dedicated Windows machine (where I'm typing right now) but I also spend a fair amount of time in Parallels on the OSX machine. I prefer Parallels to other virtualization solutions, even on Windows. So anytime I need a special Windows environment, I'm likely running in Parallels.

The 20% of the time that I'm in OSX is for, ironically, web editors. I prefer TextMate over Windows editors for HTML stuff. Also, self hosting certain web environments is easier on a Mac because of it's UNIX base. I do almost all of my design work in Windows.

I'm a Photoshop junkie and I much prefer Photoshop in Windows over Photoshop on a mac. Same goes for Illustrator. Outside of design and development, most of my day-to-day tasks are in a browser (email, calendar, project management stuff and, more and more, even document editing and note taking).

Given that you're working with XAML, do you at all design or code in Expression Blend?

I use Blend a lot, but I don't think of Blend as a design tool. Even Sketchflow is, in my mind, more of a production environment than a design environment. I'm sure some people would disagree, but I'm most creative with pencil and paper or else in Photoshop. I feel at ease there. I'm just laying down pixels.

There may be people who feel that kind of freedom in Blend, but for me it's about production. It's precise and I'm constantly considering the constraints of layout, performance, maintainability, etc. It's a great environment for that, but not great for design.