Research and discovery

The research and discovery work focused on understanding how employees participate in the Power Platform community and what information they need at different points in the journey.

Key discovery considerations included:

• The difference between users who are discovering the community for the first time and users who already participate regularly.
• How employees find events, office hours, newsletters, recordings, and other recurring resources.
• What information users need before attending a presentation or deciding to participate.
• How to make solution sharing and guest-speaker volunteering feel simple and approachable.
• How employees could discover measurable outcomes and examples through ROI Insights.
• How community participation could be recognized through Power Badges.
• How users could access consistent visual assets through an SVG image generator/library rather than recreating common icons and graphics independently.
• Which content needs browsing, search, filtering, subscriptions, or direct calls to action.

The research direction was to understand the community as a set of connected behaviors—not simply a set of pages. A user may discover an event, watch a recording, share a solution, earn a badge, and then use a tool or SVG asset to support their next project.

Experience strategy and customer journey

The strategy was to create a central starting point that brings together discovery, participation, learning, recognition, and reusable resources. The home experience provides a broad overview while allowing users to move into focused areas when they know what they need.

The strategy was guided by five principles:

1. Community orientation: Make the purpose of the hub clear and show users how to participate.
2. Actionable discovery: Connect content to actions such as attending, subscribing, volunteering, sharing, viewing, or adding a new entry.
3. Progressive detail: Present a concise overview first, then provide deeper details for presentations, ROI examples, badges, and tools.
4. Contribution and recognition: Give employees visible ways to contribute knowledge and receive recognition for participation.
5. Reusable enablement: Provide practical tools and reusable assets—including the SVG image generator/library—to help users create and communicate more effectively.

This strategy turned a broad collection of community activities into an experience with clear pathways for finding information, taking action, and returning to participate again.

Information architecture and content structure

A significant part of the UX work was organizing different content types into a structure users could understand quickly. The home dashboard establishes the main categories, while each area supports a distinct community task.

The experience includes:

• Calendar of events: Upcoming Office Hours, Show & Tell sessions, and other community events.
• Subscriptions: Management of recurring community content such as Office Hours, Power News, and Power Newsletter.
• Engagements: Opportunities to volunteer as a guest speaker, share a solution, or participate in community activities.
• Presentation details: Event descriptions, dates, presenters, slide decks, additional information, and meeting recordings.
• ROI Insights: Searchable and filterable examples of Power Platform value, with author information, supporting details, and an option to add a new entry.
• Power Badges: Descriptions of community participation milestones and a view of badges earned by the user.
• My Power Tools: A dedicated area for finding related tools and resources.
• SVG image generator/library: The CCI Colors experience, with a searchable/filterable icon library, color controls, gradient or solid options, and opacity controls for creating reusable visual assets.

The information architecture was designed to support both browsing and targeted tasks. Users can start from the dashboard, choose a community area, search for a specific insight, review a presentation, or open a tool directly.

UX/UI design and visual system

I designed the complete interface experience, including the dashboard, navigation, cards, event components, presentation details, modals, search and filter patterns, badge views, contribution workflows, and SVG library controls.

The uploaded screens make the design approach visible through several reusable patterns. The design work included:

• Creating a dashboard that gives users an immediate view of events, subscriptions, engagements, badges, and tools.
• Designing event cards that communicate date, topic, event type, and action in a compact format.
• Creating a presentation-details page that organizes event metadata, slide decks, additional information, and recordings into one reviewable experience.
• Designing a guest-speaker and solution-sharing experience that combines a clear invitation with a direct path to participate.
• Creating a searchable ROI Insights experience with keyword search, author search, reset filters, sorting, category selection, result cards, and an Add New Entry action.
• Designing Power Badges as both a recognition system and an educational explanation of how community members can participate.
• Designing the CCI Colors SVG image generator/library with icon browsing, category controls, color selection, solid or gradient options, and opacity adjustment.
• Establishing visual consistency across cards, panels, tabs, modals, action buttons, filters, and content detail areas.
• Aligning the experience with Cox branding while giving My Power Platform a distinct community-oriented visual identity.
• Considering accessibility, contrast, readability, responsive behavior, and reusable UI patterns.

The design intent was to make the hub feel active, welcoming, and useful. The interface balances community energy with the clarity needed to find an event, understand an opportunity, review an insight, or create a reusable visual asset.

Copywriting and content design

I owned the copywriting and content design across the experience. Because the solution brings together multiple community activities, the language needed to make each area understandable while encouraging participation.

The content-design work included:

• Naming navigation areas and dashboard sections.
• Writing event labels, descriptions, calls to action, and participation prompts.
• Explaining what users can expect from Office Hours, Show & Tell, Power News, and Power Newsletter.
• Writing the guest-speaker and solution-sharing invitation.
• Defining presentation-detail labels for slide decks, additional information, and recordings.
• Creating ROI Insights search guidance, filters, result descriptions, and add-entry language.
• Explaining Power Badge requirements and participation milestones.
• Writing labels and instructions for the SVG image generator/library, including icon selection, color, gradient, solid, and opacity controls.
• Ensuring that calls to action are direct and consistent across discovery, contribution, and creation workflows.

The result is a content model that treats language as part of the experience strategy. Copy helps users understand the community, decide how to participate, and use the available tools with confidence.

Development and design-to-build collaboration

The development phase required translating the experience strategy, content model, UI patterns, and SVG library behavior into a working solution. The focus was on preserving a consistent experience across several distinct content types and interactions.

The design-to-build process included:

• Communicating page structures, navigation behavior, interaction expectations, and content relationships.
• Supporting the implementation of event cards, subscriptions, engagement workflows, presentation details, ROI Insights, badges, tools, and the SVG library.
• Reviewing working screens to identify gaps between the intended experience and the implementation.
• Refining layouts, labels, filters, modal content, field visibility, and action placement based on build realities.
• Balancing the needs of a community hub with maintainability and the ability to add future events, resources, insights, badges, tools, and visual assets.
• Ensuring that the SVG experience could function as both a browsable library and a practical creation tool.

The UX contribution extended beyond initial screen design. It included ongoing translation between community needs, content, interaction patterns, visual design, and the implemented experience.