OneDrive

Marketing Site Design, Emails, + blog

Designing a more accessible, inclusive and beautiful experience for customers and businesses looking to utilize OneDrive and Office365 products.

Visual Design | UX Design

The Opportunity

The OneDrive homepage was previously designed by an agency and our newly-formed Marketing Design Team at Microsoft decided to bring the project in-house. There were a few initial eyesores—centered text blocks as well as imagery that was not on-brand for the story we wanted to tell. The goal of this project was to do a complete overhaul of the site: both UX and UI.

My role on this team was to maintain the look and feel of the website, ensure localization and sensitivity across regions and markets, as well as contribute illustration.

Process

I assessed what information on the current page was needed and which parts we could get rid of. As the Marketing Design Team, it was also my responsibility to make sure we were showing any promotions or deals on the product in an easily-navigable experience. Kickoffs would be with marketing and product team members to address business needs. Once requirements were gathered, I would move to design explorations sessions with my team. Here, we would pick the best ones, iterate on them, collaborating on and combining our ideas. My team would then present to the larger design team. From there I took the feedback, and continued working through the designs, iterating, moving from wireframes to visual comps. I then fleshed out all the pages and delivered all comps and assets to the developer.

Solution

My solution was one that felt much lighter than the previous design. As there was a lack of an overall presence of the brand, we reincorporated OneDrive blue throughout the site as well as animations to engage the user. We created a type ramp to unify styles so the design would be more cohesive while ensuring proper spacing and page real estate for languages and characters across the world. Another major player in the redesign of the site was photography. Though Microsoft values diversity, it is not always evident in their imagery. As a person of color, I found it vital to the redesign to choose photos that best represented our diverse users across the globe.