Human problem · Hybrid work

Microsoft Places and MyHub

Making the trip to the office worth it: who’s in, where to sit, how to get there, and where to eat.

Role: Design leadership · experience strategy

Microsoft Places across the employee day. Fictitious data.

The human problem

After the pandemic, the office had to earn the commute. People came in to be with their team, and the questions started before they left home: Who will be there? Where can we sit together? How do I get there, and where do I eat?

The answers were spread across many separate tools, and none of them talked to each other.

Chapter 01

Mapping the whole day

We mapped the full employee day, before, during and after the office, scenario by scenario, with the needs, jobs to be done and opportunities at each step. The map made one thing clear: the office is a social destination, not a desk.

Microsoft employee experience journey map — Employee experience journey — needs, jobs and opportunities across the office day.

Chapter 02

Measuring where we stood

Before redesigning anything, we measured. I introduced the System Usability Scale (SUS) across the major workstreams: commute, dining, parking and smart building, and compared the mobile app with the web. The baseline gave the team and our partners a shared, honest starting point, and it showed where to focus first.

Then we made it a habit. My team ran SUS on a monthly cycle to track the effect of every UI and UX change, and I built it into annual planning so feature decisions were negotiated with data, not opinion. Internal scores are not published here.

Chapter 03

Designing the office as a destination

The Places experience starts with the day, not a floor plan. Today brings together your meetings, your building, who else is coming in, and your bookings. Find a place shows neighborhoods by open seats and by who is sitting there. Lunch appears on the map as an invitation to join colleagues, with the menu one tap away.

Microsoft Places Today and Find a place mobile experiences — Places Mobile — Today, Find a place and food discovery. Fictitious data.

MyHub mobile dashboard — MyHub — the employee day in one place. Fictitious data.

MyHub campus exploration — MyHub Explore — rooms, services and campus destinations. Fictitious data.

Accessibility was part of the design system from day one rather than a final audit, which is why the first release of Places Mobile launched fully WCAG-compliant.

Redmond East Campus workplace kiosk — East Campus kiosk — extending the experience into the physical workplace.

Outcomes

Scaled MyHub to more than 17,000 monthly active users and 163,000 sessions after the return to office.
Helped deliver the first public preview of Microsoft Places across mobile, web and physical touchpoints.
Launched the first release of Places Mobile fully WCAG-compliant.
Shaped transit, kiosk and dining strategy for the Redmond East Campus.

What I learned

The obvious things like the natural friction of the day—commuting, eating, finding a spot to park and work—can yield great things.