Microsoft Communities
Simplifying community management
Team: Ross Bonifacio, Cady Hamby, Tao Lu, Hiya Sachdev
Role: Business Alignment • Feature Design (0→1) • User Research & Synthesis • Cross-Platform UX • Product Strategy
Year: 2023
tl;dr
Microsoft Communities brings Teams into the everyday lives of hobby-based, in-person groups by addressing the gaps left by traditional online platforms. I led the research and 0→1 feature design to define how Teams could support community owners across event planning, collaboration, and engagement—work that directly contributed to future product decisions.
Highlights
Tools for managing in-person events
New event management features help owners streamline communication, check-in attendees via QR codes, and track event analytics to support community growth in real-world settings.
Features to sustain engagement between events
Member-oriented features such as Community Story and Community Recap help communities stay active online and attract new members to keep the momentum alive between in-person events.
Background
What is Microsoft Communities?
Launched in December 2022, Microsoft Communities replaced the free version of Teams to help everyday users build and manage hobby-based groups. Unlike professional Teams environments, Communities have a more social, visual, and human feel while retaining Microsoft’s reliability.
Our goal
Identify which existing tools could be adapted for hobby-based use and design new features tailored to community owners who host in-person events.
Understanding the opportunity
In-person community leaders need a lightweight yet reliable platform to plan, promote, and sustain engagement across both physical and digital spaces:
Through a competitive analysis of existing community platforms and a survey by 15 community organizers we recruited at local outdoor events, we discovered a clear gap:
01. Competitive analysis finding:
All current life-centric platforms are designed for either online communities, niche audiences, or lack comprehensive collaboration tools.
02. Survey finding:
Community owners’ biggest challenge is fragmentation: juggling multiple apps like Instagram, Doodle, Eventbrite, and WhatsApp just to run one event.
Initial dive
Evaluating the current experience
Before defining new feature opportunities, we conducted an audit of the current Teams Communities app to understand its existing capabilities and pain points. We first performed an internal walkthrough to map all current functionalities, then ran usability tests with community owners who had never used the app before to capture first impressions and friction points:
Walkthrough finding:
01. Lack of differentiating features:
While the basic actions to create channels, chat, make events, and change settings were there, we didn't find any features that would differentiate the platform for in-person event management
Usability tests findings:
01. Templates lack functionality or are missing altogether:
Owners appreciated the presence of templates and expected them to contain different options based on what kind of community or channel they are trying to create. On the current app, however, templates were either missing or contained the same options for different selections.
02. Poor navigation & discoverability:
Owners struggled to locate or recognize core features while some basic capabilities were missing entirely.
Deep dive
Discovering community owner needs
We conducted interviews with owners, community members, and moderators to understand their different roles and pain points with current platforms.
Overview of roles:
Pain points from interviews:
01. In-person event management
It is most important to owners to track event RSVPs and attendance in order to gauge what kinds of events resonate most with their community.
02. Streamlined event organization
Owners almost always collaborate with external individuals to set up events and need a dedicated space to share up-to-date information while preserving community member privacy.
03. Moment sharing, storage, and promotion
Community owners use photos and videos from events to promote their community and increase engagement. They need a seamless and user-friendly system to store, filter, and utilize these files
Brainstorming
Ideation & feature selection
We brainstormed over 15 sketch concepts and live tested them with 4 community owners, narrowing down to ones that scored highest in quantitative impact ratings and had most potential based on qualitative feedback.
Wireframing
Feature iterations & refinement
Through 2 rounds of wireframing and live testing we cut, expanded, and refined selected features. With each feature, our goal was to rework it until owners were convinced to onboard the app and use Communities as their new platform.
01. Collaborator onboarding & event channels
Simplified communication while maintaining privacy for event planning.
02. Live Events
Turned what was once passive promotion into actionable, trackable engagement.
03. Community story
Strengthened community identity and boosted event discovery.
04. Community recap
Reduced manual work for owners and encouraged continued participation through recognition.
Final designs
01. Organize events in one place with event channels
Improved channel creation flow
⭢ Edit and create channels from the channel menu
⭢ Use templates to simplify creating different channel types
⭢ Preview channels' unique features
⭢ Use templates to simplify creating different channel types
⭢ Preview channels' unique features
New event channels
⭢ Add collaborator through various methods of communication
⭢ Set permissions for community member privacy & visibility
⭢ Link events and forward polls to keep collaborators informed
⭢ Set permissions for community member privacy & visibility
⭢ Link events and forward polls to keep collaborators informed
02. Promote and manage events with live events
Build awareness for live events
⭢ Members see when events are live
New event management features
⭢ Estimate attendance ahead of time with RSVP
⭢ Send check-in reminders during the event
⭢ Generate a QR code to display during the event and track attendance
⭢ Send check-in reminders during the event
⭢ Generate a QR code to display during the event and track attendance
03. Engage and grow community with story and recap
Community story
⭢ Select photos from albums organized by event
⭢ Preview selected photos the same way members will see on their explore page
⭢ Preview selected photos the same way members will see on their explore page
Community recap
⭢ Fully automated
⭢ Photo memories created from event albums
⭢ Custom nicknames and achievements for members
⭢ Photo memories created from event albums
⭢ Custom nicknames and achievements for members
Additional visual recommendations
Navigate Teams Communities with improved hierarchy and clean visuals
Community home page
⭢ Added details like ownership status and member count
⭢ Labeled bottom navigation for improved clarity
⭢ Labeled bottom navigation for improved clarity
Community settings
⭢ Added community description & community guidelines
⭢ Improved hierarchy for easier navigation
⭢ Improved hierarchy for easier navigation
Differentiating main community vs channels
⭢ Community banner and channels menu on homepage
⭢ Simplified channel pages
⭢ Simplified channel pages
Final thoughts
Special thanks
This project gave me the opportunity to collaborate closely with experienced UX researchers and designers at Microsoft, and to work on a product that was actively evolving in the real world. Partnering with them sharpened my ability to translate qualitative insights into concrete feature improvements while designing within an established design system. The experience reinforced how thoughtful research, stakeholder alignment, and iterative testing can meaningfully shape the direction of a newly launched product.
