Microsoft
AI Services
2018
Microsoft Cognitive Services Team
UXUI Audit
Design systems
Design leadership
Illustration
Icon Design
UX Strategy
User Profiles
Journey Maps
The Microsoft Cognitive Services are a suite of machine learning APIs and tools available to help developers build intelligent applications by easily adding cognitive features—such as emotion detection, speech recognition, and language understanding. Our team was hired to redesign the Cognitive Services landing pages, consulting on content strategy and visual language.
The Problem
The Microsoft Cognitive Services customer-facing landing pages had fallen out of alignment from the updated style guide, Fluent. It was brought to our attention that the SEO was a wreck, and they needed suggestions to help fix the issue.
UX Audit
We navigated landing pages, subpages, documentation and demos, taking meticulous audit of the information architecture, user flow, UI patterns, and messaging. In short, we found the pages a tangled mess. One thing was clear though—the following issues led to a muddled user experience.
The Issues
Architecture had become a patchwork of confusing, conflicting, even moving or disappearing menu items & CTA’s.
Many icons & illustrations were not visually consistent in style, and often poorly communicated their concept.
Failing SEO ranking for Microsoft AI services routinely dropped behind competitor’s results, often pushed to subsequent pages.
Messages rambled with an overuse of trendy jargon & confusing terminology, making it difficult for the user to find help and make informed decisions.
UI referenced outdated, inconsistent style guides & pattern libraries.
Lengthy listed content impaired readability.
user profiles & journey maps
I helped create a comprehensive competitive analysis and defined personas to ask key questions from varying perspectives. Then, I leveraged the personas to draw up user profiles and journey maps to best find and explain user pain points. This enabled me to reframe them as opportunities for solutions.
SOLUTION
Rethinking the Content Strategy
I helped thoughtfully organize and edit content, with empathy for the needs of a diverse demographic of users (i.e. expert developers, directors, product managers, etc.) creating an inspiring and helpful user experience.
Design Recommendations
Simplified & reworded navigation elements to be intuitive, eliminated contradictions, & resolved dark patterns
Found opportunities to supplement messages with helpful internal and external cross-linking to relevant content, useful information, documentation and reference material.
Wrote engaging story in conversational voice and clear terminology
Integrated pacing elements such as pull quotes to retain a human element.
Characterized AI service features as inspired business solutions and Microsoft’s unique benefits with case studies
Wireframe Layouts
Illustration Design
Solution
I explored several options for the user interface that would be familiar to iOS users, while adhering to the existing UXUI patterns of the Amazon Photos app.
