Files experience in Microsoft Teams
Building file-interaction and collaboration experiences for Microsoft 365
Role & Impact
- Managed a design team that built file experiences in Microsoft Teams
- My team focussed on file discovery, sharing, viewing, and collaboration experiences in Microsoft Teams on desktop
- Brought a research-first approach (qual & quant) to understand product gaps and user needs, to help define product priorities and roadmap
- Worked in close partnership with various Microsoft 365 teams such as OneDrive, Outlook, Microsoft Office, and Windows
Work at Microsoft
At Microsoft, I design the OneDrive experience for Windows and macOS, and work on next-generation OneDrive and Copilot features focused on clarity, productivity, and product quality.
Over time, my work has spanned core collaboration and productivity experiences across the Microsoft 365 suite. This includes leading design for file-sharing and file-consumption experiences in Microsoft Teams, and shaping both consumer and enterprise versions of Microsoft Lists.
In earlier roles, I managed and mentored designers while remaining closely involved in product work, helping define direction and raise the bar on execution across web, desktop, and mobile experiences. I also designed OneDrive mobile experiences and modernized the SharePoint Metadata Admin Center (part of Microsoft Syntex).
Beyond product work, I led the Design Internship program and key University Recruitment initiatives, contributing to Microsoft India's design culture and long-term talent pipeline.
Files experiences in Teams
Microsoft Teams has about 300 million users, and a huge percentage of them use files on a daily basis. My team owned the entire lifecycle of a 'file' in the Teams ecosystem on desktop. User jobs for these files include sharing files (from desktop and cloud), viewing files in Teams, re-sharing files, and discovering the files shared.
Some of the jobs we were attempting to simplify included:
- Ways to choose a file to share
- Selecting people to share a file with
- Confidently adding the right file to a conversation
- Securely sharing the file with the right permissions
- Experience of the file recepient
- Discovering and retreiving files at a later time
We streamlined and optimized these experiences in collaboration with Leadership, Product Management, and Engineering teams. The overall objective of this effort was to win user love through delightful product experiences.
As file experiences in Microsoft span across several products, such as OneDrive, Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Stream, SharePoint, Windows, and various mobile apps, I worked in tandem with partners across the globe to design consistent and coherent experiences for Teams' users.
This is part of ongoing work and I can share further details when necessary.
