The Counter-Intuitive Truth

Most people think killing a product is failure. But what if killing the product meant setting its power free?

That's exactly what happened when we transformed Viva Amplify from a destination app into an invisible plugin. Instead of asking users to come to us, we went to them.

The Results: When "Death" Means Success

78% of usage rate, with a 20% increase month by month

• 20% adoption rate among eligible users in SharePoint - lightening speed, and fast growth to nearly 80% when rolling out to Microsoft internal users

• Really positive feedback praised "clarity, simplicity, and in-context power"

• Amplify transformed from structured destination to invisible enabler - making it a verb

  
  

Strategic impact:

• Opened pathway for Amplify to be a verb across other Microsoft 365 apps.

• Leadership response: "This is a one-team offering. Let's build this."

• Proved the embedded premium model for future Microsoft products

My role: Co-designer for 15-person cross-org feature crew, design system champion, design-to-code implementation lead

The Challenge: Why Kill a Successful Product?

Viva Amplify was already successful — 620K monthly users, $8.8M FY24 revenue, 120+ enterprise customers including Unilever and Pfizer, within one year after it GA-ed.

But here's what we discovered: while corporate communicators loved the structured campaign approach, everyday communicators found it overkill. Designers, managers, HR partners just wanted to share updates quickly without switching tools.

The insight: Can we meet communicators where they already work, rather than asking them to come to us?

So we started this journey, making Amplify a verb. And this has been a fast-paced and challenging one.

The Vision: Communication Where It Begins

In late 2023, leadership challenged us to bring Amplify's power directly into SharePoint News — where millions create content daily.

This wasn't feature expansion. This was strategic transformation:

• From standalone app → embedded capability

• From structured destination → invisible enabler

• From "come to us" → "we'll meet you there"

"Meeting people where they are" — Viva's core principle — suddenly had concrete form.

The Complexity: Designing Across Ecosystems

The technical challenge:

• Integrating two different product teams with different design principles

• Making premium features feel native without disrupting SharePoint workflows

• 15-person feature crew across Microsoft organizations

• EVP-level attention and timeline pressure

My approach:

Research-driven foundation — 4 key user insights shaped our strategy

Unified design principles — bridged Amplify and SharePoint philosophies.

The key was finding the intersection: Amplify's premium capabilities needed to feel additive to SharePoint's seamless publishing experience, not disruptive to it.

This principle guided every design decision — from entry point placement to workflow simplification. Users should never feel like they're switching between two different products, even though they're accessing functionality from both.

14 wireframe iterations — tested entry points, flows, and edge cases

SPDS partnership — leveraged design system for scalable integration

The Solution: Invisible Yet Powerful

Amplify from SharePoint embedded cross-channel publishing directly into SharePoint News workflow.

What made it work:

• No tool-switching — amplify from SharePoint command bar

• Campaigns optional — publish without campaign overhead

• Native experience — follows SharePoint design patterns

• Smart integration — pre-filled content, customizable per channel

Innovation: Created new SharePoint drawer patterns for uncommon sizes, establishing reusable components for future cross-product features.

The Bigger Picture: Design as Strategic Bridge

This project proved that design can lead strategy, not just follow it.

When I presented Amplify from Engage (Teams integration concept) at Spring FHL, it sparked immediate leadership buy-in and cross-team collaboration — before a single line of code was written.

Key insight: Sometimes you don't need to ship a feature to shape the future. You need to make the invisible visible.

The Paradox Realized

We "killed" a premium app by making it everywhere. The result? Amplify became more valuable, not less.

This is what happens when you design not just for users, but for the spaces between products and the future beyond current boundaries.

The real success wasn't launching a feature. It was proving that sometimes the best way to grow a product is to let it disappear.