Microsoft Skype for Business Redesign: 2015-2016

I led a distributed design team of 5 + 1 UX researcher (Redmond/London) and we partnered with several PMs and a dev team in Stockholm to deliver a redesigned product for our Mac user customer base, with a new brand (Skype for Business) in a little over 6 months, while managing other priorities concurrently.

Situation

The Lync product for Mac (a 1B + business), while used by a large segment of customers hadn’t been updated in years. Several large accounts were complaining, threatening to switch, and generating negative press in the market which was also threatening our Windows base. We needed to move quickly to pair this launch closely with our Windows launch.

The state of the Mac tool in 2015 was unacceptable to customers and their users

We started aligning on shared goals with leadership and the cross-functional team

Through “quick and dirty” user research and wireframing, we clarified our focus. We saw that there were 3 main behavioral segments in terms of how different users used the tool currently. Each segment had varying degrees of complexity to solve for. Ultimately, we optimized for general information workers who made up the majority of the customer base using the Mac product.

From there I had the team split into 2 parallel work streams. One design pair started building and testing interactive prototypes, leveraging the skills of one of our awesome design developers + UX research running RITE studies to iterate and refine the UX/interaction model.

While another pair, explored visual design in parallel. I set up weekly design crits and bi-weekly reviews with leadership. I also negotiated getting a conference room taken offline so we could use it as a project “war room” and hosted all our meetings there.

Finally we moved into detailed design, working closely with our developers in Stockholm. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to their site which helped tremendously in building relationships and aligning on processes that helped us move very quickly and hit our release goals.

Results

Skype for Business, Mac shipped in 2016.
Successful in saving key accounts worth millions to the business.
Enterprise customers and their users were happy generating positive press buzz.
It was a proud moment for the team. We all learned a lot about how to increase velocity by being more efficient without sacrificing quality.

Microsoft Skype for Business Redesign: 2015-2016

Situation

We started aligning on shared goals with leadership and the cross-functional team

From there I had the team split into 2 parallel work streams. One design pair started building and testing interactive prototypes, leveraging the skills of one of our awesome design developers + UX research running RITE studies to iterate and refine the UX/interaction model.

While another pair, explored visual design in parallel. I set up weekly design crits and bi-weekly reviews with leadership. I also negotiated getting a conference room taken offline so we could use it as a project “war room” and hosted all our meetings there.

Finally we moved into detailed design, working closely with our developers in Stockholm. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to their site which helped tremendously in building relationships and aligning on processes that helped us move very quickly and hit our release goals.

Results

Skype for Business, Mac shipped in 2016.

Successful in saving key accounts worth millions to the business.

Enterprise customers and their users were happy generating positive press buzz.

It was a proud moment for the team. We all learned a lot about how to increase velocity by being more efficient without sacrificing quality.

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