Find what matters.
Read company news, find a team site and reach the documents needed for work.
All work
MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT START / 2023-2024
A fresh start
Turning SharePoint’s front door into a place to create, not just find content. I joined a stalled initiative to connect the experience and shape a first version we could ship.
- Role
- Hands-on designer and
matrixed design lead. - Collaboration
- Cross-geo design, PM, engineering, research, content, data science, UX engineering and design management.
- Period
- 2023-2024
- Scope
- Creator-first entry, onboarding, templates, content management, publishing and sharing.
>847k
Monthly active Start users by October 1, 2024.
25%
Of Start’s monthly active users creating artifacts.
>99%
Reported publishing reliability, up from roughly 90%. All P1 scenarios stable.
TL;DR / Overview
- Problem
- SharePoint’s creator-first front door had stalled without a shared journey connecting creation, publishing and content management.
- Role
- Hands-on designer and matrixed design lead, shaping the experience model, focused V1 and cross-team decisions.
- Surfaces
- SharePoint Start, templates, drafts and published pages, publishing and sharing.
- Reach
- More than 847,000 monthly active Start users by October 1, 2024.
- Result
- 25% of Start’s monthly active users were creating artifacts; reported publishing reliability rose from roughly 90% to over 99%.
- Status
- Shipped in 2024.
01 / THE CONTEXT
One platform.
Many different jobs.
SharePoint connects sites, pages, news and documents, supporting teamwork and organisation-wide communication. Its users arrive with very different jobs to do.
Get something out there.
Create pages and news posts, share updates and keep published content useful.
Keep it working together.
Organise sites, manage access and help information reach the right people.
A simpler start had wider consequences.
These roles overlap: today’s reader may be tomorrow’s creator. Creating a page means deciding where it belongs, who can see it and who can manage it. Sites, navigation and permissions connect those choices.
Start was an entry point into this system, not a standalone creation tool. A creator-first experience still had to preserve familiar routes to existing content.
The ambition was shared.
The model wasn’t settled.
Months of work had not converged on a launchable V1. The primary journey, templates, publishing, permissions, navigation and measurement still needed a shared model.
Feedback from 12 MVPs also raised creation governance and confusion across Microsoft 365, OneDrive and Start landing pages. I needed to connect those decisions.
02 / THE RESET
Give the first version
a job it could finish.
Within my first week, I established a creator-first job, a focused V1 and a cross-functional structure for making decisions.
Start with what someone wants to make.
In a comparative study (n=70), a majority preferred intent-based templates to a prototype organised around Sites, Pages and Newsposts.
I centred V1 on creating useful content and reaching people, rather than choosing a site first.
Expand creation without losing people.
Wayfinding research showed people using bookmarks, Teams and Viva Engage to find news and sites. Those habits mattered. Finding content remained a secondary job, rather than disappearing.
Content before site.
Let people create before choosing where the work will live.
Keep work together.
Bring drafts and published pages into the same management experience.
Publish, then distribute.
Support personal or selected-site publishing, with email and sharing paths.
A SHARED WAY TO DECIDE
Two principles we could actually use.
I defined two principles to align the team around the creator, giving us a shared way to judge the details.
Bring Delight and liveliness
A modern palette, secondary accent and intent-led layouts gave the main value proposition room to breathe. Well-crafted templates made the possibilities tangible, instead of asking people to imagine an empty page becoming useful.
EMPOWER
Put templates front and centre, with intent-based filtering to make starting easier. Walkthroughs, draft thumbnails and a clear next action helped people begin, return to their work and create with confidence.
03 / THE DESIGN
The reset had to work
one interaction at a time.
I worked hands-on across interaction, content, onboarding, templates, management, publishing and sharing. These choices turned the model into a usable first version.
Let the idea come first.
I designed creation and onboarding so people could begin without selecting a site. The destination became a publishing decision, not the price of getting started.
Show enough to choose.
A thumbnail had to help someone recognise the job, anticipate the page and feel ready to begin.
Customer feedback prioritised project management and company announcements, then onboarding and event management. I started with those intentions, not the artifact label.
I compared inspiration-led, intent-led and balanced treatments. The direction moved between two needs: an inviting first impression and a predictable page structure.
Literal preview
Faithful to the page, but dense text and imagery become hard to scan. A miniature screenshot was being asked to explain both the purpose and the composition.
Cropped layout
A stronger first impression, with less of the overall structure visible. Bringing the page closer made it more inviting, but hid what came after the first section.
Simplified structure
Hierarchy is easier to scan, but replacing photography loses character and context. Simplification helped the structure; it did not need to erase everything that made the page feel real.
More abstract
More expressive, less predictable. Inspiration could not replace information about the layout. Studies with and without text clarified the split: words explain the purpose; imagery suggests the composition.
The final balance
Keep real imagery and recognisable sections; turn dense body copy into lines. A clear label signals intent, while hover reveals sections below the fold, their order and the mix of text and images.
03 / MANAGEMENT
Keep unfinished work in sight.
I brought drafts and published pages into one management view, connecting creation with the work of returning, updating and publishing.
Design past the Publish button.
V1 supported personal or selected-site publishing, email-ready pages, email distribution and sharing. I worked through those interactions and their underlying permissions and content hierarchy.
04 / VOICE & MOTION
Make the front door
feel open.
The principles shaped the words, visual rhythm and first seconds of Start. They were part of the experience, not a final layer of polish.
-
Successfully shared over email
-
Link successfully shared
-
No published pages
-
No draft pages
-
Create something beautiful
-
Moving in progress
00% complete
-
Successfully moved
-
Your page is taking a bit longer to move
01 / 04
Human, not technical.
Confident, not noisy.
I defined a human, non-technical and confident voice to reduce anxiety and make the experience understandable.
The copy describes what someone can do, not the product model: “Create. Share. Inspire.” is the invitation; “Choose a template to kickstart your next idea” is the next step.
Tone still depends on the moment. An empty state invites a first attempt. Frustration needs clarity and reassurance, not the enthusiasm of a celebration.
One illustration set, not one-off moments.
Defining the illustration set for Start was a big win. I brought the Musea language into empty states, progress, delays and confirmations, so the words and imagery could work as one experience rather than a collection of unrelated messages.
TWO LAYERS, TWO DIFFERENT JOBS
Some motion explains.
Some motion sets the mood.
Reveal something useful.
The thumbnail scroll reveals more of a template before someone chooses it. It responds to their interaction and returns when they leave.
Make creation feel inviting.
The colour field and moving headline bring the entry point to life, without replacing useful information or competing with controls.
From colour to atmosphere
Five overlapping shapes blend a 60/30/10 palette of neutrals, secondary accents and brand teal into a quiet background.
Blur at source scale: 200px on one shape, 300px on the other four.
The shapes turn along a repeating 12-second path.
05 / THE TEAM
Bring people with you.
Stay close to the work.
I led through influence, aligning stakeholders across functions, geographies and seniority without a formal reporting line.
Across repeated review cycles, I anchored decisions in the creator’s primary job, V1 scope and dependencies. Making tradeoffs explicit helped turn competing priorities into decisions the team could execute.
I set up shared workspaces and cross-functional reviews while staying hands-on with the experience. Connecting navigation to hierarchy and publishing to permissions kept the product decisions grounded in the end-to-end journey.
06 / REFLECTION
Make starting easier.
Keep the decisions connected.
What I would carry forward.
Moving between the product’s purpose and its smallest choices. A focused V1 became real when entry, templates, management and publishing told the same story.
What I would keep watching.
Who returns to create, where work stays unfinished, and whether publishing and sharing make sense across organisations. Getting someone started is only the beginning.
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