Role
Program Manager for Messenger in Outlook.com
Project Overview
In 2012, Microsoft unveiled Outlook.com, their reimagined webmail experience that would replace Hotmail. My area of responsibility for this project was the Messenger integration into this experience.
We designed the messaging experience to be a companion app to all of the Window Live properties including Outlook.com, SkyDrive (now OneDrive), and People. You can quickly start a conversation from any of these areas using any of your connected networks such as Messenger, Skype, or Facebook.
When Microsoft acquired Skype, we took the experience to the next level by making it so that a call to any of your Messenger and Skype contacts is just one click away.
Responsibilities
As a program manager, I was responsible for all of the user flows in the Messaing experience as well as their entry points in other experiences. While I was not responsible for the visual design, I worked closely with our designer to make sure that all of our user journeys were pixel perfect.
Messaging in Outlook.com. We designed the experience according to Microsoft's Metro design language.
In addition to the messaging experience itself, our team was also responsible for all of the entry points to begin a chat or call.
Due to initial capacity limitations, we had to have a staged rollout of the Skype calling integration. This notification let people know when calling was available to them.
Since some users already had Skype accounts, we let them link their Skype and Messenger accounts so that they would be reachable everywhere they signed in.
One step of the calling plugin installation flow
Face to face calls right from your inbox!
The Skype marketing team put together this great video showcasing how the experience works end to end.
