Those planning a visit to Microsoft’s transformed campus in Redmond, Washington, will witness the early stages of a seamless employee and guest experience, one made possible thanks to user-centric design.

This Design philosophy puts the user—an employee or a guest—at the heart of every decision and aligns all the facility’s services—physical and digital—to the needs of people. With this approach, seemingly mundane events and tasks that might normally cause friction in a person’s day are smoothed out as much as possible.

How are we doing this?

By turning the broad and diverse array of microtasks—the numerous operations of varying effort that allow you to accomplish the larger and more impactful parts of your job—into a consistent and logical end-to-end experience.

With us moving to a new campus, there’s a way to make it more connected, consistent, and accessible. By being user-centric, we allow campus to work for the user rather than the user having to work around the campus. People can be efficient and do the things they need to do.

—Dave Crawford, director of product design, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

This new experience is taking shape at Microsoft’s transformed 72-acre east campus, which, when it opens in late calendar year 2023, will feature 17 new buildings, a 2.8 million square foot underground parking garage, and three athletic fields. At this major new part of our headquarters, we will employ user-centric design to smartly connect the normally disconnected services a person uses to get through a typical day. By doing this, we’re transforming mundane tasks into experiences that will make it worth a trip to the new campus.

[Learn about Microsoft’s upgraded transportation experience in Puget Sound. Find out how Microsoft’s dining transformation is easing its employees transition back working in the office. Explore how Microsoft is reinventing employee experience for a hybrid world. Discover how Microsoft’s campus enables navigation with new IoT technology and indoor mapping.]

Making our day seamless

Our daily lives are filled with microtasks, including getting to work, finding a parking spot, tracking down a meeting across campus, and ordering lunch. All of these tasks seem menial, but they’re still a necessary part of your day.

And it all adds up, which is why we took a different approach for our latest project.

“With us moving to a new campus, there’s a way to make it more connected, consistent, and accessible,” says Dave Crawford, director of product design with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company. “By being user-centric, we allow campus to work for the user rather than the user having to work around the campus. People can be efficient and do the things they need to do.”

Microtasks are often filled with pain points, little headaches that require a tad more brain power than we’d like to expend. For example, you may have one system to buy lunch, a different one to locate a meeting room, and a third for reserving a Microsoft Connector bus that gets you from home to the office and back.

This myriad of services can become a bit much, especially for new employees or visitors.

“It used to be ‘Take a building, fill it with nice things, and people will figure it out,’” Crawford says. “That’s not how it works anymore. Mobile consumer apps have made our personal lives much easier—be that finding a ride, navigating the world, or ordering food. We expect that kind of convenience and simplicity at work now as well.”

Rather than leverage disconnected systems, user-centric design tries to reduce the burden by introducing consistent and logical flow between services. This makes it easier for people to access services, learn how to use them, and then actually put them to good use.

We’re not focused on one tool; we’re looking at the overall experience. What should we adjust to make the whole day better overall? Not just one part. We found problems at all the different tasks that lead to an effective day.

—Greg Saul, UX designer, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

It’s the same reason why Microsoft embraces coherent design across its products, where a similar look and feel, along with familiar usage patterns, empowers quick adoption. User-centric design enabled Microsoft to look at the journey a person takes as they travel to and across a Microsoft campus then apply the same coherent design principles. The end result was consistencies among different systems, including interfaces with enough in common to make campus services easy to learn and use.

But user-centric design also means building out new backend experiences to support these services.

“There are so many scenarios and surfaces to account for; we have to maintain a realistic vision,” Crawford says. “It’s not as simple as an app with a list of dishes, we need to consider the entire end-to-end experience, from the backend to enter the menu data, to browsing and showcasing, all the way to payment. We have the technology, but we also have to make it approachable and usable.”

What an end-to-end experience looks like

Elevating a visit to Microsoft’s new campus means giving people fast, efficient, and seamless experiences. This includes apps for mobile, kiosks decked out with core experiences, and websites, all with the same functionality, interface, and services.

We will have a 6,500-stall underground parking garage with 17 buildings above it. The space is so big and there’s no line of sight, so you’ll need to use digital tools to find your car or to make sure you come up to the surface at the right location.

—Paul Egger, regional digital transformation lead, Microsoft Real Estate and Facilities

“We’re not focused on one tool; we’re looking at the overall experience,” says Greg Saul, a UX designer with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “What should we adjust to make the whole day better overall? Not just one part. We found problems at all the different tasks that lead to an effective day.”

The team initially conducted extensive global research on the journeys employees take throughout their workday, which revealed areas of the employee experience within our physical buildings that could be greatly improved and enhanced by overlaying digital elements.

“We conducted a series of studies leveraging many, many research methodologies—these ranged from focus groups, diary studies, surveys, and interviews with hundreds of employees across the globe,” says Ashley Graham, director of user research with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “Our research showcased numerous ways we could improve our employees’ daily journeys in the workplace through digital tools that could be integrated in services and buildings that our employees and visitors use.”

This research then enabled the team to assemble a roadmap to ensure employees and visitors can achieve their goals when they visit our campus. That roadmap is a prioritized list of everything that an employee or guest is going to engage with, in order to take care of the things they came to the campus to do.

And the roadmap starts with a user’s trip to campus.

“We will have a 6,500-stall underground parking garage with 17 buildings above it,” says Paul Egger, a regional digital transformation lead with Microsoft Real Estate and Facilities, the organization responsible for managing and operating the buildings and services across Microsoft. “The space is so big and there’s no line of sight, so you’ll need to use digital tools to find your car or to make sure you come up to the surface at the right location.”

We’re all used to using apps for mobility and food. We want that for Microsoft employees as well. We want a shared experience that can be leveraged across different campuses without having to re-learn the UI.

—Suma Uppuluri, principal group engineering manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Sensors will keep track of stall availability on each floor, directing users to open spots. Once you’re parked, an app on your phone will know where your car is. In the future, the mobile app will integrate with your Outlook calendar to locate the best area for parking relative to where you’re trying to go.

For those who take Connectors and shuttles into the office or to move around our campuses, new systems for booking trips to and around campus have been deployed. This new ride reservation system will have the consistent look and feel of other services and can be accessed from a variety of endpoints, including kiosks in every lobby. Digital signage alerts riders of the next arriving vehicle, which takes the confusion and stress out of getting around campus.

“We’re all used to using apps for mobility and food,” says Suma Uppuluri, a principal group engineering manager responsible for movement and wellness with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “We want that for Microsoft employees as well. We want a shared experience that can be leveraged across different campuses without having to re-learn the UI.”

And once you’re on campus, how do you know where to go?

In the past, the campus might have felt like a maze of numbered buildings that must be navigated by signage alone. It was a common source of stress and a wasted use of energy.

Pathfinding across Microsoft’s new campus will also be part of this seamless user-centric design experience, where mobile apps and kiosks can direct you where to go, inform you if the person you’re meeting with has arrived, and help guests check in on their own.

“If they’re late, you can’t start the meeting,” Saul says. “If every meeting is delayed ten minutes, it’s harder for anyone to get anything done.”

And, as the team is designing these apps and kiosks, it collects feedback from employees along the way. Design and product management partner closely with user research to test and evaluate early-stage prototypes and concepts with employees to further refine them and help ensure a usable and useful campus experience is delivered.

User-centric design touches upon every aspect of a person’s day. Meals can be ordered ahead so that they’re ready when you are, workspaces can be easily booked, and when you’re done for the day, the same systems that got you to campus will help you get home.

A seamless future at Microsoft

Transforming a variety of services into a seamless end-to-end experience meant bringing together stakeholders from across Microsoft to align on a single mission.

“It’s about all the teams building a vision together and creating a connected experience,” Saul says. Approaching this as one team is helping us solve the user’s problem.”

These new implementations will also make life better for the people who own and operate the services. The reduced occupancy on campus due to the pandemic and flexible hybrid work environment gave Microsoft an opportunity to rethink the technology and bring in new efficiencies.

“We’re returning to the office from a fully digital remote experience,” Uppuluri says. “Everyone is looking to see how our new hybrid work experience will match up too.”

Early on, the results are good. “What we’re working toward is a best-in-class workplace that takes the best elements of working remotely and working in the office,” she says.

Every day, new experiences that improve campus life are being deployed across Microsoft that empower employees to do more while reducing the burden of microtasks that they have to complete.

This will be one of the reasons people choose hybrid over fully remote.

“You should like being at Microsoft,” Egger says. “We should take the pressure and thought of being here away so that you can focus on the things you want to.”

As Microsoft moves forward, user-centric design choices made on the new campus will be deployed at other campuses, allowing Microsoft to scale great experiences for employees and visitors everywhere.

• Before you get started, use user research to understand the pain points and obstacles that prevent your people from being productive and happy in their daily work. This will help you understand employees and not make assumptions.
• User-centric design puts people and their journey at the center of your decisions. Map out what a person’s day might look like, tell the story of which microtasks they encounter on their way to impactful efforts and determine how to minimize the burden.
• It also means soliciting feedback from users. Don’t assume the experiences you create solve the burden without first engaging with the people who will be interacting with them. Once you understand what their needs are, iterate before making final decisions on the user experience you build.
• A project of this size requires several stakeholders across a variety of services. Spend time aligning on the vision; one team being in disagreement will disrupt the entire approach. Using an established roadmap can help here.
• Accessibility is paramount to user-centric design. Make sure you’re building your services with everyone in mind.

• Learn about Microsoft’s upgraded transportation experience in Puget Sound.
• Find out how Microsoft’s dining transformation is easing its employees transition back working in the office.
• Explore how Microsoft is reinventing employee experience for a hybrid world.
• Discover how Microsoft’s campus enables navigation with new IoT technology and indoor mapping.