Inclusive Design - Microsoft
Formalized and scaled inclusive design practices across Microsoft — creating practitioner training pathways, workshop pipelines, activity-card methods, and leadership engagements that embedded accessibility and co-creation into product development.
Years: 2016–2024
Role: Principal/Lead UX, Inclusive Design
Scaling inclusive design through workshops, methods, enablement, and reusable content systems.
Overview
Partnered with Office of the Chief Technical Office (OCTO) and Microsoft Consulting Services to build a repeatable, storytelling-driven engagement model for Inclusive Design. This combined workshops, customer co-creation sessions, and practitioner enablement through badges, playbooks, and templates. The program shifted accessibility from a compliance requirement to a strategic communication and design framework, enabling teams to understand user diversity and design with intentional inclusivity.
I facilitated sessions across engineering, product, and customer teams, helping leaders and practitioners adopt language, tools, and practices that made inclusive design part of their everyday decision-making.
Process
As a design leader adn practioner, I partnered with teams in creating a scalable pipeline for how Inclusive Design was taught, communicated, and applied:
- Designed a repeatable engagement framework (qualifying questions → preparation → delivery → artifacts → follow-through).
- Co-created the Practitioner’s Guide, learning paths, and Massive Open Online Courses(MOOC) materials for broader internal adoption.
- Designed and facilitated Inclusive Design workshops using Activity Cards and scenario-based methods across internal teams and customer engagements.
- Delivered Inclusive Design storytelling and practice at major internal events (TechReady sessions, Early Access Program workshops, CEO-to-CEO engagements).
- Built a reusable visual and content system—agendas, templates, toolkits, and workshop assets—that made the program easy to adopt across organizations.
Impact
- Trained hundreds of practitioners, advancing inclusive design literacy and embedding accessible methods into engineering and product practices.
- Supported design-led opportunities through clear workshop outcomes (case studies, Statement of Work (SOW) inputs, reusable artifacts).
- Established a sustainable capability adopted across multiple organizations, enabling teams to design more intentionally and inclusively without requiring specialized facilitation.
- Strengthened Microsoft’s reputation for Inclusive Design through consistent frameworks, visuals, and communication assets used across Microsoft globally.
Artifacts
- Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit (reference)
- Activity Cards in practice
- Practitioner’s Guide and templates
- Workshop agendas and storytelling materials
- Inclusive Design process flows
Toolkit overview
Activity cards in practice
Inclusive Design Process