In it's initial release, the People Card in Microsoft Teams was a simple stagnate information panel with a profile summary and contact information. But, as well all know, people are so much more than that and for a product that was focused on team collaboration, it was important that our relationship with people feel extremely - personal.
Interaction Designer
February 2017 - December 2017
Four engineers, one Design Researcher, one Project Manager, Designer at LinkedIn, Office 365 People Experience team, Interaction Designer (me)
Adobe Creative Suite
Sketch
Zeplin
Users are faced with information and document overload. And often the real trick is not what you know, but who you know. Let's stretch that a tad more to say it’s really what “they know” that promotes a gain in productivity. At the onset of this project, People across Office360 were fairly one dimensional - often represented by nothing more than an avatar, a name or basic contact card. For Microsoft Teams, a product focused on people to people communication, elevating how users are viewed through the contact card was a high priority opportunity.
Our goal for the project was to introduce and infuse personality into how users experience People across Microsoft Teams. One of the most prominent constructs for representing people in the product are "People Cards" - modal cards that load when a person's avatar is hovered on. The original design was a stagnant card with basic contact information. We wanted to elevate these cards into dynamic, contextually aware, and highly integrated representations of the person and your relationship to them.
Our high level goals were to:
An intelligent representation of people.
A 360 degree view of your relationship with a person.
Deeply integrated across the Office platform.
People cards are made of insight panels fed by a variety of signals that empower people and groups to…
People Cards were an Office365 wide collaboration. I served as the Interaction Design representative for Microsoft Teams throughout the process. This was a two way street – I represented the needs and opportunities of Microsoft Teams upstream to an Office-wide initiative, as well as translating and building upon the work done at an the Office365 level into the design language and specific user needs of Microsoft Teams.
I worked with most directly with…
Office365 People Experience Team
Sean Gilmore - Project Management, Microsoft Teams
The People Card should feel familiar across Office365 but pivot content based on 3 contextual vectors
