TIMELINES IN OUTLOOK
Company: Microsoft
Project: Timelines in Outlook calendar
Role: Senior UX Designer
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The Problem
The core scenario to be solved was for an individual or group of people to keep track of important project dates and milestones. Office 365 set out to do just that with Timelines in Outlook. I was the Senior designer for the project and drove the project forward with design and helped create the vision that became timelines.
The How
Timelines were to be shown in the calendar module and will primarily be used as a way to view a subset of items from various calendars in timeline form. I was responsible for defining the user experience and interaction design, helping define the business value proposition for O365 and integrating timelines into the visual framework of Office 365. I partnered with user research, project management, development and upper management. This project was a great cross-group collaborative effort and very fun to see come to life.
The Solution
The timelines feature was a success in many ways but the biggest for the team was we earned 7 patents for the work we did in this space. Users loved the new feature design and found it easy to use and intuitive. I am very proud of the work I did on this project as the lead senior designer. Helping people do their jobs more efficiently is the reason I work in user experience and this was one of the best results I've had in my career.
When you select an item on the timeline, you quickly see all the details and can edit or cancel right from there.
This shows how easy it was to add an item to the timeline and edit the details.
We designed a quick and easy way to send a timeline via email. Users loved this feature!