Work at Microsoft
Leading roles in 7 experiences in Bing whole page, internal tool & design system as a part of the Design Coherence Team in Microsoft Web Experience Collective(WXC);
Duration
April 2021 - July 2022 (4 months)
Tool Used
Figma, Adobe Creative Suites
My Work
User Flows
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Design System
Prototyping
Work directly with
4 Product Designer
2 Project Manager
4 Developers
My experience
My work scope of work involves...
Design System
Design Audit
Production
Due to NDA, I am only allowed to share limited content， even in interviews.
Highlight 1
Internal Tool Design
3 design iterations for an internal tool user flow
What did I do
Collaborating with a project manager and the Microsoft Suzhou team in redesigning the submission flow of an internal design evaluation tool. Going through 3 design iterations based on the feedback from PM, fellow designer & dev team.
Create comprehensive files for more efficient design audit and implementation.
Design Audit Screenshot
Highlight 2
Design System Audit
Icon audit for next iteration of the design system improvement
What did I do
Preparing for design system improvement as a part of the coherence team. Work with senior designers, the dev team, and different design subdivisions to ensure we collect and organize all the design resources we need.
Create a comprehensive design audit file to make sure we can more efficiently make design changes in the future.
Design Audit Screen shot
Highlight 3
Highlight 3
Accessibility project
Create HiFi demo for an accessibility-related feature
What did I do
Collaborating with project manager and developers to create HiFi demos for screen reader features that incorporate a dialog box and virtual keys in the demo to showcase the entire workflow.
HiFi demo Screenshot
My Takeaway
Takeaway 1
Design for a well-established product
It is a new experience for me to work on a well-established product like Bing. Governed by a strong but flexible design system, I need to make sure that my explorations and implementations align with the existing style.
To do that, I took some time to make myself familiar with the design system and understand the boundaries of where I can be appropriately creative and obviously productive. Other than that, I also check with my manager in a not annoying manner when I don’t think I have full knowledge.
Takeaway 2
Dealing with complexity
Sometimes, I need to deal with technical details that are typically not very friendly for designers to process, some of them were about the domain knowledge of the product, while others are about design implementations.
Whenever I run into a complex issue like this, I usually screen-record all the technical details in the meeting so that I can keep referencing and learning without wasting other people’s time. Meanwhile, I took notes, and made diagrams and flow charts using Figma to both help me better understand the issue and prepared to explain it to peer designers when we are on design critique.
Takeaway 3
Collaboration in a large organization
The team scale of Microsoft is greater than all of my previous teams. In that case, when presenting/communicating with different departments, we need to know that the other end of the communication is not usually fully aware of your context.
To make this situation easier, I usually prepare a briefing regarding the context of my presentation and leave room for questions just to make sure my communication is succinct but efficient. I also communicate with my manager in a rhythm that we are both comfortable with so that she can provide me pointers on who in the organizations I should go to so that I can further improve my design and production.
