The Dual Challenge

When I joined Viva Amplify in 2021, I faced a unique design challenge that went beyond typical product work:

Build Microsoft's first dedicated corporate communication and campaign management product — while making it feel cohesive across three connected yet standalone design systems: Fluent (Microsoft's foundation), Viva (our product suite), and SharePoint (our platform).

This became a story of product creation AND design systems bridge-building.

The Impact: Product Success + Design Coherence

Campaign Management Features Results:

• 620K monthly active users within 16 months

• $8.8M FY24 revenue, 120+ enterprise customers

• 2.29K campaigns for companies like Unilever and Pfizer

Design Systems and Coherence Results:

• Fluent Design System champion across Amplify, Viva and SharePoint

• Led Fluent v9 migration and craft & polish initiatives

• Established 80-20 framework (80% Fluent, 20% Viva personality)

• Created quality standards influencing broader Microsoft teams

Building Campaign Management

The Missing Infrastructure

Corporate communicators were trapped in broken workflows: Word docs, email approvals, manual publishing across disconnected Microsoft tools. No centralized solution existed for managing internal communication campaigns.

Designing a New Mental Model

I focused on creating a campaign-centric approach that would structure how organizations think about internal communication:

Core system components I designed:

• Amplify Home — centralized campaign dashboard

• Campaign Brief — structured planning for objectives and key messages

• Campaign Goals — trackable metrics connecting communication to outcomes

• Publications Management — organized content library for storytelling

This wasn't just interface design — it was defining how structured corporate communication and campaign management should work within M365.

Navigating Design Systems

As Amplify grew, a complex challenge emerged: how do you make one app feel coherent across product surfaces?

The not-so-aligned influences:

• Fluent Design System — Microsoft's foundational design language

• Viva on Fluent — patterns making Viva apps feel like a suite

• SharePoint Design System — platform architecture requirements

Becoming the Bridge

Rather than choosing one system over others, I became the connector between these different approaches:

Key initiatives I led:

• Design Coherence Documentation — mapped conflicts between systems

• Fluent v9 Migration — co-led transition ensuring design-engineering alignment

• Adopt and practice the 80-20 rule — practical framework balancing standards with personality

• Cross-team Collaboration — regular partnership across design systems teams, design engineering, and product teams.

Key insight: Sometimes design leadership means being the translator between different systems, helping them work together rather than making them identical.

Craft & Polish: Raising the Quality Bar

While building features, I noticed engineering often stopped at "functional" while users expected "polished."

My quality initiatives:

• Craft & Polish Dashboard — systematic approach to quality issues

• Design-Defined Metrics — stronger design voice in quality standards

• Motion Design Integration — sophisticated animations (campaign goals tracker)

Real impact: The Copilot Deployment Kit I designed became a proof point for quality — 300 campaigns launched within 30 days, showing how good systems thinking accelerates adoption.

The Compound Effect: Product + Systems Excellence

Individual Features, Systematic Impact

The campaign management system I built became a model for structured workflows across Microsoft 365. The design patterns and quality standards influenced how other teams approached similar challenges.

Coherence, within diversity

My experience bridging multiple design systems became valuable expertise as Microsoft moved toward integrated experiences. I learned to navigate complexity rather than eliminate it — finding coherence within diversity.

Evolution: From Builder to Bridge

What I Learned

Building Amplify taught me that design systems work is often about collaboration and navigation rather than top-down architecture. The most impactful work happened through partnership and alignment across teams with different priorities.

The Bridge Role

My role evolved to become the connector between product needs and systems constraints — ensuring business goals, user needs, and technical realities could coexist within a coherent experience.

The insight: Great design systems work often looks less like building new frameworks and more like helping existing frameworks work together harmoniously.

The Continuing Story

The campaign management foundation I designed now supports Amplify from Anywhere — proving that solid foundational thinking scales across different product strategies.

The design systems navigation skills I developed became essential for cross-product integrations where multiple design languages must coexist seamlessly.

Reflection: Building AND Bridging

Product Dimension: I created the foundational system that defined how Microsoft approaches structured internal communication.

Systems Dimension: I became skilled at navigating and bridging multiple design systems, ensuring coherence without sacrificing unique strengths.

The lesson: Sometimes the most valuable design work happens in the spaces between systems — where careful navigation creates experiences that feel seamless despite their complexity.

Building from zero often means building bridges. The art is in making those bridges invisible to users while honoring the different worlds they connect.