Office 365 (previously known as Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite and Office Live) is a productivity solution for small and enterprise-sized businesses. Prior to this project and ultimate launch, it was a collection of disparate solutions that lacked cohesion and customer focus. Bringing two organizations together, the design process required demanding organizational agility in addition to the re-establishment of an inclusive design process itself.

Working with our product partners, an agreed upon set of personas were established. These user archetypes were qualified and refined through multiple user research activities, and allowed the team to ground solution explorations and debates with a shared customer understanding.

Bringing multiple existing products together required task analysis and breakdown to drive the mental model and information architecture.

After multiple generative brainstorming and sketching workshops, pen and paper was put aside in favor of digital mid-fidelity wireframes. These facilitated further discussion and alignment across the organization, and allowed us to iterate quickly. They also served as a foundation on which our design developers could begin to craft the interactive prototype, which later enabled lab usability testing and served as a living reference and specification as formal development continued.

Running in tandem with low-fidelity usability testing, the visual designers had to establish a new look and feel to tie the disparate products together. Working closely with the Microsoft Brand team, brand tenets, moodboards, and focus groups informed the final visual approach.

Sample screens of the final product and website.