Situation

The Microsoft News Feed delivers personalized news across Windows, Edge, Bing, and the Microsoft Start mobile app. Nextdoor is a geo-based social platform where neighbors share news, support local businesses, and receive public service updates. Both platforms attract hundreds of millions of monthly visitors.

This partnership aimed to enhance Microsoft’s local news offering while driving traffic back to Nextdoor. Initial design proposals did not fully meet stakeholder requirements and so I was brought on board to lead a renewed design effort to align the experience with Microsoft’s framework, address Nextdoor’s brand identity concerns, and improve user trust.

Task

The project needed a refined design that would:

Leverage existing UX patterns within the Microsoft Start framework
Strengthen trust and communication through improved card structure, action prompts, and avatar inclusion
Address Nextdoor brand identity requirements, including logo usage, color standards, and iconography consistency

I worked directly with my Product Manager, consulted with my Design Mentor, and collaborated with the Microsoft Design System team to align on these requirements.

Action

To achieve stakeholder alignment and deliver a scalable solution, I:

Created wireframe variations that integrated a revised set of requests from stakeholders while remaining true to the Microsoft Start design language
Partnered with the Design System team to identify and implement reusable patterns from existing cards, including Sports, TakeLessons, LinkedIn, and Weather features to adapt them for the Nextdoor experience
Refined navigation and card-level components to improve user comprehension, adding prompts, descriptive strings, avatars, and clearer Nextdoor branding to the card
Mapped user flows across light and dark modes, accounting for edge cases such as long location names and user input scenarios
Collaborated closely with engineering through hand-off and testing, leading bug-bashing sessions to ensure delivery quality and adherence to design intent

Results

The Nextdoor partnership became a core feature of Microsoft’s news vertical and delivered measurable business impact:

The partnership drove millions of unique visitors to Nextdoor (See Q3 2023 shareholder letter)
The project reinforced Microsoft Start’s position as a platform for both global and hyper-local news at scale
Enthusiastic support from stakeholders and leadership at both Microsoft and Nextdoor (See Nextdoor Press Release following the launch) (See Leadership LinkedIn Post following the launch)

The outcome was driven by design execution and by cross-functional collaboration, alignment with system patterns, and thoughtful brand stewardship.