Skype for Business
Skype lived in a single rectangle. The work didn’t.
Microsoft asked for a vision of Skype for Business beyond the chat window — how it would show up on the surfaces work actually happens on.
Skype for Business existed inside a single rectangle: the desktop client. But the work it was supposed to support didn’t. Conversations spilled into meeting rooms, phones, broadcasts, and back again.
A set of vignettes built around real work scenarios — a meeting room, a control tower, a clinical broadcast, a phone in transit — each anchoring Skype to a specific surface.
Five surfaces designed in concert, held together by one shared visual vocabulary — concrete enough for stakeholders to react to, so the future felt like a product, not a sketch.
The product had to be everywhere the work was.
Skype for Business existed inside a single rectangle: the desktop client. But the work it was supposed to support didn’t. Conversations spilled into meeting rooms, phones, broadcasts, and back again. The product had to be everywhere the work was.
Microsoft needed a way to show stakeholders what that future could feel like: concrete enough to react to, not another deck of abstract diagrams.
Each vignette anchored Skype to a specific work scenario.
Each vignette anchored Skype to a specific work scenario and a specific surface. A field-ops meeting on a wall display. A logistics manager pulling a status check on a phone. A clinical broadcast with live captions, watched on a tablet in a different language than it was spoken.
One vocabulary, every surface work shows up on.
The visual system held all of it together: one vocabulary across surfaces. The same blue header, the same timeline metaphor, the same way of showing who’s on the call. So the future felt like a product, not a sketch.
designed in concert: wall display, laptop, tablet, phone, terminal.
anchored to real work scenarios, not abstract diagrams.
shared across surfaces, making the future feel like a product.