Microsoft's largest design effort to date

PRODUCT

Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365 (2023)

ROLE

Design Manager & Systems Lead for Fluent Design Studio / Copilot for Business

CONTRIBUTIONS

• Strategic planning, ideation, and design direction
• Research, user journey maps, and UX design
• Rapid prototyping 
• Led system design and documentation (i.e. UX, UI, IxD, Motion, A11y)
  
• Global identity and branding collaboration across product suites (e.g. M365, Power Platform, Azure, and Dynamics 365)
• Led Copilot feature launches across Power Platform and Dynamics 365
  

WHY

Empower all customers with generative AI to achieve more. 

WHAT

After the success of Github Copilot, and Open AI working hard on releasing their first commercial ChatGPT (Nov 2022), teams across Microsoft collaborated on a "tented" (secret) project: build, design, and ship a Generative AI Chat as soon as humanly possible.

HOW

Take Microsoft research, pair it Open AI technology and create a new AI design system with assets and implementation guidance. Then dispurse team to help release the first set of AI features across Microsoft. (For me and my team Power Platform and Dynamics 365) to enhance the capabilities of the existing products. 

CHALLENGES

• Global team effort of tented project
• Quick deadlines for branding -> marketing -> UX and UI alignment
• Technical constraints of Open AI integration
• Legal and IP trademark timing

Generative AI is changing industries more rapidly than we've ever seen 

This project was a high-priority initiative that truly epitomized the 'all hands on deck' ethos. This endeavor was a collaborative effort of all the centralized design teams, research, AI experts, architects, as well as a team from M365 branding and marketing. We adopted an agile methodology, working in two-week sprints punctuated by Senior Leadership presentations and approvals. My role was multifaceted, incl. market research, project planning, documentation, and implementation strategies, as well as direct involvement in UI/UX design, rapid prototyping, interaction design, and motion. Throughout this initial phase, we got invaluable insights, and it was remarkable to witness seasoned design leaders set aside personal ego to foster a cohesive, and flat heirarchy work environment. Copilot's first version used the M365 logo as its icon, in retrospect a pragmatic choice that paid off due to the lengthy legal process for logo approval and V1 features all tied to the M365 suite. Although we anticipated some user confusion, this decision ultimately reinforced the association of AI innovation with the M365 brand.

The initiative started with Jon Friedman and Kurtis Beavers (Fluent Core/M365) putting together a cross-disciplinary task force with all the horizontal design studios across Microsoft incl. M365, Azure, Business Apps and Global Marketing. The focus was on extending Github Copilot's success to Microsoft's entire suite of products by using generative AI and large language models. First focus was on naming, branding and brand-voice of Copilot. 

Copilot as a name was quickly signed off by leadership. It had a reputation and well established userbase already in Github.
As GEN AI features shipped fast and before we had time to fully develop a new Copilot brand we decided to use the sparkle icon as it was used to indicate AI features in the past, as well as throughout the industry. This worked well to indicate features with generative AI, but Copilot inside of Microsoft still needed a logo even if temporary. After much debate leadership settled on launching Copilot with the M365 logo, as it would get us ample time to figure out a brand for Copilot while in Preview release, and most of the new features with Copilot was inside of M365 anyway.

At Microsoft's annual March event 2023 Microsoft introduced Copilot capabilities in M365 using the Microsoft 365 logo. 
Read more / Read and watch the announcement.

Copilot experience and branding March 2023

We created Figma components and assets with extensive guidance to make sure we could launch and change things fast. These files were updated in real-time, labeled with caveats, and distributed across all business suites. 

WIP Assets in Figma 2023

New Copilot logo November 2023. 

Finally after months of hard work we introduced Copilot – General Availability with new capabilities and features across all of Microsoft. My team successfully help launch Business Copilot across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Read more

Example of the V1 input component for Copilot chat. 

All design studios across Microsoft (M365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Azure) worked together to create the UI and guidance for Copilot input and output. Core goal was to intuitively guide users without overwealming onboarding or UI, and to create something familiar yet new and delightful. 

Examples AI,LLM, Copilot guidance files created in Figma for V1. 

In order to ensure alignment and well executed implementation we crafted a number of Figma guidance files with breakdowns and token components to help our design and engineering teams.

Outline of Flair – A motion indicator/reference to help guide users through Copilot features.

Our team worked to flesh out a visual indicator that would work as the key identifier of Copilot and Copilot infused components. The goal boyond a delighter was to guide customers through their interaction journey, without extensive onboarding. The affordances included Loading, Input and Output, indicate interactive surfaces. 

Examples from the interactive guide for AI Guide for Enterprise Experiences

Together with the AI Experience Research team we put togehter a comprehensive guide based on durable insights to serve as assets and documentation for PM, design and engineers when planning, creating and implementing new AI features across Microsoft Enterprise (Power Platform and Dynamics 365). 

Power Automate – 'Describe it to Design it'

Automating Automation – First Business Copilot.  

My team (Fluent Design Studio) was tasked to help shape and implement the Power Automate NL2FLOW feature, setting the stage for Copilot's future integration. The feature solution was grounded in research and one big common challenge: "How do I create a functional automation flow?". By harnessing natural language and Copilot's LLM, users could articulate their automation needs, allowing Copilot to assemble effective flows. This helped with onboarding and ensured customer success in creating and implementing Power Automate flows, resulting in a significant uptick of 28,000 monthly active users crafting successful flows, as well as making it the go-to first step in flow creation.

Final thoughts:

Launching Copilot across Microsoft business has been a crazy journey with a lot of learnings. It shows that a even in a big machine such as Microsoft we can stay nimble and create and launch industry changing experiences within a year if we just work together. Big Kudos to all design leaders at Microsoft that had to take big risks and stayed true to design principles and research. Satya and SLT for going all in on the Copilot brand even when media and news-outlets at the time where writing negativily around the Github Copilot brand. That narrative seems completly changed today and from the start of 2023 to today Microsoft Business Copilot has over 2 million monthly active users, and expected revenue between $2.39 billion and $9.2 billion yearly. 

If you made it this far, and have any questions or interest in Copilot. Send me a message on LinkedIn or email. Cheers!

Microsoft Copilot has over 2 million monthly active users for its business applications copilots

©2018 Andreas Kleiner and respective clients

hello[at]andreaskleiner.com

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