Team: Engineers, 2 Designers, PM Focus: UX Design
Strengthening Azure, Microsoft’s Most Important Product
I played a major role in designing one of Microsoft’s most core experiences, the entirety of https://myaccount.microsoft.com/. If you’ve ever signed into a Microsoft account, you have probably encountered some of my work. If you work for an organization that uses Azure, your work account is managed through systems I designed. Some of my work was also presented at Microsoft Ignite.
MFA You May Be Familiar With
I designed many of the authentication flows that Microsoft uses to securely log in its users. If you’ve ever set up multi-factor authentication on your Microsoft account, that was my design work!
Adding Value: Organizations Can Require MFA
One design challenge I took on was for an interrupt that would force a new user to set up the multi-factor authentication methods required by their organization after a grace period. The challenge here was in not copying work since it would be a waste to have a different user experience than normal for the interrupt. I solved this problem by building the interrupt around the existing authentication flows. The flows were able to stay exactly the same with the interrupt moving the user through them one at a time.
A mock-up of an interrupt screen that is asking a new user to set up the three authentication methods required by their organization. The first one is the Microsoft Authenticator app.
A mock-up of the the Authenticator App being set up from “My Profile” rather than the interrupt.
A mobile mock-up of the interrupt asking the user to set up three authentication methods.
FIDO Authentication Presented at Microsoft Ignite
One authentication related project I had the pleasure of working on was designing the flow for Microsoft’s then new FIDO system, which allows users to use a special flash drive as a sign in method. This plugged right into the previous authentication work I had done, giving users one more new way of setting up their authentications methods via this new system.
This work was even showcased at Ignite, Microsoft’s annual innovation convention. It was a tremendous honor to have my work showcased to the whole of the company in this way.
A mock-up of the FIDO authentication method.
Creating “My Account” for Microsoft
From its profile view to its app and access management systems, I was either the sole designer or a major contributor in designing Microsoft’s entire account management space. I’ll explore some highlights below.
A Clean and Accessible Profile Page
Microsoft’s profile page began as a sketch drawn in an open space during a conversation between myself and a couple of other designers about how to structure the experience. We wanted to use wide tiles with heavy whitespace and big icons to make it very obvious to anyone how to get to the big important things like changing your password. From there I moved into a shared design file with my colleagues and refined the idea with input from engineering until we had our high fidelity mock-ups.
An early sketch of the “My Profile” UI.
A refined mock-up of the “My Profile” UI.
A refined mobile mock-up of the “My Profile” UI.
Adding User Managed Permissions to Azure
“My Access” is where users manage their own account access to things like groups, apps, and other resources. Instead of having to reach out to their organization’s IT group for support, users can see for themselves what their work account does and doesn’t have access to. They can also make access requests on their own if they need permission to use something for their work. Because permission management can often be quite complicated, the design intent here was to make the system as easy to understand as possible. Existing access permissions are shown on spacious tiles, and requesting new access is done by just searching and selecting.
A mock-up of the “My Access” main page which shows all permission access that has been assigned to the user.
A mock-up of how a user would request access to multiple things in bulk.
