Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity redefines how businesses understand user behavior and create meaningful experiences. The recent redesign of Clarity goes beyond visual appeal, introducing a workspace meticulously tailored for usability and personalization. By prioritizing intuitive navigation and consistent design, this upgrade empowers users to optimize their products and build experiences that truly resonate.

TEAM
Developers, Product Managers, Researchers

Discovery phase

Before its redesign, Microsoft Clarity embodied an enterprise-grade approach, offering robust analytics with detailed data visualization tailored for technical users. However, its complexity sometimes posed challenges for everyday website owners seeking intuitive insights. The transformation to a more consumer-grade design focused on accessibility, simplicity, and visual clarity.

Brand Perception Research

In the brand perception research conducted for Microsoft Clarity, we engaged customers directly to understand their feelings about the product and invited them to choose words that best described the brand. To gain a comprehensive perspective, we extended this approach to analyze our competitors, allowing us to gauge how Microsoft Clarity stacks up in the marketplace and uncover areas for differentiation. Internally, we took a reflective approach by involving our own team in a similar exercise, exploring how we perceive our brand's current position and envisioning where we aim to go. This holistic analysis provided valuable insights not only into customer sentiment and competitive standing but also into opportunities to refine and enhance our product. By carefully evaluating feedback, we identified areas for improvement to better meet user needs. Additionally, these findings enabled us to create detailed personas that represent key user groups, helping us design targeted solutions and communication strategies that resonate more deeply with our audience. This integrated process has been instrumental in shaping a roadmap for growth and innovation.

Define phase

In this stage of Microsoft Clarity’s redesign, we focused on shaping a clear direction by distilling user insights into actionable opportunities. We crafted “How Might We” statements to frame challenges in an optimistic and solution-oriented way, ensuring our approach fostered innovation rather than constraints. Prioritization was key, so we leveraged an impact/effort matrix to evaluate potential features—balancing the value each improvement would bring against the resources required to implement it. This method allowed us to outline deliverables and refine scope strategically, ensuring we focused on high-impact changes that would make Clarity more intuitive and accessible while remaining feasible within development constraints.

Develop phase

I leaned into rapid exploration to uncover the best possible user experience. I started by creating moodboards, pulling inspiration from industry trends, intuitive design principles, and user expectations to define a cohesive visual direction. From there, I embraced the "mild to wild" approach—iterating through designs that ranged from subtle refinements to bold reinventions. This method allowed me to push creative boundaries while staying grounded in usability needs. By quickly cycling through ideas and testing different design extremes, I was able to refine concepts efficiently and ensure the final experience felt fresh, accessible, and impactful.

Research

To enhance user experience, we recognized the need to simplify our navigation, which was previously three levels deep and significantly pushed the content down. I conducted usability testing comparing a side navigation (side nav) with a top navigation (top nav). While the side nav appeared more modern, it ultimately proved less usable. Users preferred the top nav, as they appreciated having the words associated with the icons, which made navigation more intuitive and accessible.

Clarity After

The final designs for Microsoft Clarity were the result of a deeply user-centered design process that I spearheaded from start to finish. I led the team through iterative cycles of research, ideation, and refinement—always prioritizing the needs of our users. By conducting extensive surveys and usability testing, I gathered direct feedback that shaped every aspect of the redesign, ensuring that Clarity evolved into a more intuitive and accessible tool. I guided the team in translating insights into meaningful design decisions, balancing innovation with practicality to create a seamless experience. This dedication to user advocacy allowed us to deliver a rebrand that was not only visually compelling but genuinely impactful in how users interact with and derive value from Clarity.