Windows Mail and Calendar
Led Mail and Calendar through two platform transitions while aligning the work with Outlook on the web.
- Organization
- Microsoft
- Role
- Principal Product Design Manager
- Timeframe
- Jan 2017–May 2020
- Focus
- Experience strategy, Platform transitions, Portfolio alignment
UX connected separate Engineering and Product Management organizations through Fluent, Experience Reviews, and shared measures of shipping success.
One UX direction across separate product organizations
I led UX for Windows Mail and Calendar from approximately January 2017 through May 2020 while also leading Outlook on the web across screen sizes. Engineering and Product Management remained organized around separate products, while peer UX leaders led the native Outlook mobile and desktop apps. UX became the connective layer between the web and Windows work without treating them as the same product.
The parallel web work is covered separately in the Outlook for Web story.
Fluent at Windows scale
Beginning in 2017, Mail and Calendar helped translate the emerging Microsoft Fluent Design System into shipped product experiences. The goal was not visual novelty. It was to apply light, depth, motion, material, and scale while keeping high-frequency communication and planning clear and familiar.
A more adaptable product foundation
The later move from XAML to React Native created an opportunity to rethink the apps rather than reproduce them. I set the overall experience strategy and a foundational interaction model centered on personalization, customization, and greater coherence with Outlook. That framework gave a multidisciplinary design team shared direction while feature work moved in parallel.
A shared operating system for quality
Three mechanisms aligned work across the separate organizations: Fluent provided a common experience language; Experience Reviews used cognitive walkthroughs of core customer tasks before release; and flighting with telemetry provided a scorecard for shipping success. Together, they connected design principles, pre-release judgment, and observed customer behavior.