Copilot Chat in Outlook

Back when generative AI was in its infancy, Microsoft was building Copilot, our AI assistant to help users shorten the gap between intent and outcome. As lead designer, I helped ship and integrate an agentic chat system from 0-to-1, scaling the experience from 170K → 14.2M WAU. My role was dynamic and diverse, ranging from defining foundational product principles with cross-org design partners, architecting the first set of widgets, evangelizing how chat interacts with the canvas, differentiating chat’s value in product apps vs. standalone, and strategizing with eng, PM, research, and content partners.

Role: Lead product designer

Themes: Interaction design, prototyping, creative direction, product strategy, multi-platform execution

The highlights

A high level snapshot of this project's impact on the business, users, and overall product experience.

Grew Copilot Chat from 170K to 14.2M users by evolving an inherited App Chat experience into an Outlook-native product, redefining how AI fit into everyday email workflows.

Starting native and in-flow*

Early on, Outlook believed its differentiation was in building native experiences that built on our unique experiential workflows. Back in early 2023, it wasn't natural for a user to wake up wanting to chat with an agent. They simply want to get through email, understand conversations, write better messages, and stay on top of their inbox. AI should first improve those jobs directly. Chat is valuable, but it should amplify our core workflows rather than replace them.

*I didn't design the first set of these experiences but they're here to set the context.

Draft with Copilot on Outlook mobile, generating an email from a prompt.

Draft with Copilot. Help me write emails faster by turning a few bullets into a complete email, generating a first draft from thread context, and reducing blank-page anxiety.

Summary by Copilot on Outlook mobile, condensing a long email thread.

Summarize with Copilot. Help me understand before I act by synthesizing long email threads and getting to the essence of the email quickly so I can prioritize.

Coaching in Outlook on desktop, suggesting tone and clarity improvements.

Coaching with Copilot. Help me communicate more effectively and increase my confidence before I hit Send by improving tone and reducing communication mistakes.

Chat becomes a first-class citizen in Outlook

As our on-canvas experiences matured, my role was to work with partners across Office (e.g., Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Loops, OneNote, and many more) and the core Copilot Chat team to define what Chat should look and feel like in the apps. Along with these design partners, I spearheaded experiential principles, in-app and cross-app interaction guidance to establish coherency.

Six Copilot-in-Outlook experience principles: don't duplicate or re-invent, protect your focus, chat needs to feel fast, Copilot meets you where you are, and avoid unexpected behavior.
Created experience principles aligned across Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Fluent design system teams to help us make informed, quick decisions, reduce subjectivity, and create consistency across the ecosystem.
Turned a zero-precedent chat handoff into a design playbook adopted across Copilot apps, carrying intent and context from Outlook into Word so the move felt like a continuation of the user’s work, not an abrupt product switch.
Evolved Copilot from a passive Q&A tool into a chat that moves through Outlook to get email tasks done, understanding intent, then handing off to native surfaces like search so it felt more capable without duplicating the product.

Spearheading the widget experience

As our user base grew, research and data pointed at actionability and ‘moving work forwards’ as one of the top gaps to differentiate ourselves. I designed the first set of widget experiences to bring email experiences both within and outside Outlook, which helped shape how ‘rich’ interaction patterns show up in chat as a system.

Defined how Outlook looks and feels outside the app, turning chat answers into widgets people can inspect, adjust, and act on, so they no longer had to leave chat to get email work done across Microsoft 365.
Three Outlook widgets in Copilot Chat: an email compose draft with Edit in Outlook and Send, a meeting scheduler offering time slots, and an email search result.
Led the design of more widgets, including email compose, calendar scheduling, and email recall, scaling one actionable pattern across everyday Outlook jobs so more real work could get done right in chat.
Set the precedent for side-by-side experiences in the Copilot app on desktop, opening emails right next to chat and making sure mail reads as well there as it does in Outlook. In seven days, this drove 1.28M Outlook side-by-side launches, about 13.3% of all side-by-side launches.