Branding
Product design
Visual design
Systems design
Making the intranet feel like the organization behind it
At a glance
The product lacked the visual and branding capabilities customers needed to make their intranet feel like their own, and it was becoming a competitive gap.
I identified the opportunity, made the case to stakeholders and led the end-to-end design of multiple initiatives to expand the platform's visual and branding capabilities.
Organizations could finally build intranet experiences that genuinely reflected their brand, directly addressing an unmet customer need.
OPPORTUNITY
Organizations couldn't make the intranet feel like theirs
Organizations wanted their intranet to feel like theirs: more on brand, more modern, and more visually engaging. At the time, the product's visual capabilities were lacking, and it was becoming a noticeable gap. I led a series of initiatives to expand the platform's branding and layout capabilities, giving organizations the tools to build intranet experiences that genuinely reflected their identity.
The product is built on top of Microsoft's SharePoint, which meant new capabilities had to extend the existing ecosystem rather than replace it. This was the core constraint I was designing within. Every improvement needed to feel native to SharePoint while going meaningfully beyond what it offered out of the box.
PROCESS
Advocating for the direction
Expanding the platform's visual capabilities wasn't just a design challenge. It required making the case internally. I identified the gap through ongoing customer feedback and brought it forward to stakeholders, framing it around business value and competitive positioning. With buy-in secured, I was responsible for defining and delivering on a clear vision: an intranet that looks and feels like the organization behind it.
Key considerations that shaped every design decision
Across all initiatives, a few key considerations shaped how I approached design decisions.
Maintained visual alignment with existing component and layout patterns.
Designed to integrate with existing web part structures.
Customization capabilities accessible to non-technical site owners.
Balanced creative freedom with consistency across pages.
These considerations shaped every layout, component, and branding capability introduced across the product.
solution
Giving organizations the tools to express their brand
I introduced a series of capabilities that collectively expanded the platform's visual language and gave organizations meaningful control over their brand expression.
Layout flexibility
Introduced compact and side by side layouts to reduce visual weight and give communicators more control over page composition. The new layouts were designed to scale across the product, with multiple features updated to support both options consistently.
Banner redesign
Rebuilt the banner component to support background images, video, and mobile-specific configurations, turning it into a genuine campaign canvas.
Section and web part backgrounds
Gave authors the ability to apply brand colours, images, and video across entire page sections and individual components.
Personalized greetings
Added dynamic greetings that recognize birthdays and work anniversaries, making the intranet feel more personal.
Documentation and handoff
Each initiative was supported by detailed documentation covering breakpoint behaviour, content and text limits, interaction states and keyboard navigation, giving developers and QA everything they needed to implement and validate the design accurately.
outcome
Transforming the intranet into a reflection of their brand
Introducing branding and layout capabilities gave organizations the ability to create intranet experiences that genuinely reflected their identity, something that had previously been out of reach within SharePoint's limitations. Communicators gained greater flexibility in how they structured their pages, reducing scroll and making homepages feel less repetitive. It directly addressed what customers had been asking for, and the feedback we received about how their intranets looked and felt made the impact clear.
