How I designed Viva Amplify's campaign foundation from zero, filling a long-standing gap in Microsoft 365 — while achieving design coherence across Fluent, Viva, and SharePoint.
The Dual Challenge
When I joined Viva Amplify in 2021, I faced a unique design challenge:
Build Microsoft's first dedicated internal communication product — while making it feel cohesive across three competing 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 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
Led Fluent v9 migration and established 80-20 framework
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 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 internal communication should work within Microsoft 365.
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.
Navigating Design Systems
As Amplify grew, a complex challenge emerged: how do you make one app feel coherent across different design systems?
The competing influences:
Fluent Design System — Microsoft's foundational design language
Viva Personality — brand patterns making Viva apps feel like a suite
SharePoint Foundation — 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
80-20 Solution — practical framework balancing standards with personality
Cross-team Collaboration — regular partnership across design systems teams
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 Initiative — systematic approach to quality issues
Design-Defined Metrics — stronger design voice in quality standards
Design Coherence in Viva — presentation for awareness and action across teams
The Compound Effect: From Individual to Systematic
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.
Design Systems Navigation as Core Skill
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.
Key insight: Sometimes design leadership means being the translator between different systems, helping them work together rather than making them identical.
The Continuing Story - Building and Bridging
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. For details: From Impact to Evolution: Designing the Death of a Premium App
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.
