Bridging Collaboration between Microsoft and Universities
This was a coursework project where a team of my peers and I were tasked with developing a platform that could facilitate university-Microsoft project collaboration.
About the project
Date:
Aug-Dec 2025
Client:
Microsoft
Services:
UX Research, UX/UI Design
Understanding the Current State of University-Microsoft Collaboration
Interviewing University and Microsoft Collaborators
We knew we needed to start by understanding the people who would be using our platform, so we interviewed Microsoft employees who sponsor projects and university collaborators who help develop the project then pass them off to students.
Microsoft Employees
Project communication over email leads to cluttered inboxes and missed emails
Different parts of the same projects might be worked on by different universities
Administrators want an easy way to have oversight of all university projects
"I wish there were an easier way to communicate projects other than by email."-Microsoft Employee
University Collaborators
Also experience the downsides of email communication
Scope projects for their students, but otherwise leave students to be responsible for the project work
"I scope the projects, then hand it off to students."- University Collaborator
Designing a Collaboration Platform
Conducting a Competitive Analysis on Collaboration Platforms
To further inform our design decisions, we looked at different, well-regarded platforms' design systems to see what they did well and we can take inspiration from in our own designs. An example of this can be seen below.
We used inspiration from this successful existing workflow management systems in our own designs, specifically the tags and charts outlined in red (from Monday.com).
Ideating/Sketching
As a team, we each made 8 sketches of different features that could be included in our platform. We then critiqued the sketches and made notes of the best ideas for our final design. We learned through this activity that we would need different views of our portal, as our user groups needed different permissions/access to features.
*Note: the stars were used to note areas of interest, or a particularly good feature
Prototyping in Figma
After sketching our initial designs, we moved to prototyping in Figma. Our main goal was to make the prototype interactive for usability testing, not to create a high fidelity finished product. In the lower left you can see which view each screen belongs to.
When designing this prototype, the team split up make screens individually, but I made sure to encourage the team to continue to ask for advice or critiques and to continue to communicate within the team.
Testing Our Prototype + Handoff
Usability Testing
We ran usability testing on our prototype to test if the way they functioned matched user's mental sets. Largely, our prototype, but we did find a few small bugs through usability testing we fixed prior to handoff.
Sponsor Handoff
We handed off the standard research & design documentation and prototype to our sponsor once we completed the project, but we also added in a unique document in our handoff. We made a developer document, so that developers of the portal had a clear guide on its different functionalities and user flows.