Understanding the opportunity

The initial challenge was to make branded communication creation flexible enough for different communication needs while keeping the experience consistent and easy to manage. Users needed the ability to:

• Create banners, tables, and email layouts
• Adjust colors, fonts, and images
• Preview the final communication
• Save templates for future use
• "Mix-and-Match" saved email components to create new layouts quickly
• Schedule communications for future use

The experience also needed to help standardize design without requiring every user to be a visual-design expert.

The UX Challenge:

How do we give employees enough control to create effective, branded communications while providing enough structure to keep the experience consistent, reusable, and efficient?

This framing influenced the template model, editing workflow, reusable components, visual controls, content hierarchy, and preview experience.

Discovery considerations

The discovery work focused on understanding the recurring tasks involved in creating branded communications and the controls users would need to complete those tasks efficiently.

Key considerations included:

• Supporting different communication formats, including banners, tables, and email layouts.
• Making brand controls such as colors, fonts, and images accessible without overwhelming the user.
• Helping users start from an existing template or create new content from reusable components.
• Providing a clear way to review and preview communications before they are used.
• Reducing repetitive work for recurring announcements and internal messages.
• Replacing the dependency on a costly third-party platform with an internally managed Power App.

These considerations led to an experience that combines flexible design controls with repeatable templates, branding opportunities, and standardized visual patterns.

Experience strategy

The strategy was to organize the app around a reusable-template workflow rather than a one-time content-creation task.

PowerComms supports a progression from finding an existing communication, to editing its content and visual styling, to reviewing the final result and creating reusable components for future work.

The strategy was guided by five principles:

1. Template-first creation: Start with an existing communication whenever possible to reduce redundant work.
2. Flexible branding: Allow users to adjust colors, fonts, images, and layouts while keeping the experience structured.
3. Modular design: Support reusable banners, tables, email sections, and other communication components.
4. Review before use: Make the final communication visible through a preview experience before it is shared.
5. Standardized efficiency: Help teams create consistent communications more quickly through saved templates and repeatable patterns.

This strategy turns branded communication creation into a manageable workflow that can support both occasional and recurring communications.

Information architecture and content structure

A significant part of the UX work was deciding how users should move between existing communications, template editing, visual customization, preview, and component creation.

The primary experience areas include:

• Template and communication list: A centralized view for finding existing communications and identifying available actions.
• Communication editing: A structured workspace for updating content and configuring email details.
• Brand customization: Controls for selecting colors, fonts, images, and other visual attributes.
• Preview: A review view that shows how the communication will appear before use.
• New email creation: A workflow for creating a new communication from a blank or structured starting point.
• Reusable components: A dedicated experience for creating and managing components that can be used across future communications.

The six-screen reference illustrates this structure through the template list, editing view, color picker, communication preview, new-email workflow, and reusable-component screen.

The information architecture was designed to help users enter through an existing template, a new communication, or a reusable component and still reach a clear next step.

UX/UI design and visual system

The UI design translated the strategy into a focused, operational, and brand-aware interface.

The screen designs use clear groupings, forms, dropdowns, color controls, preview states, action icons, and reusable layout patterns to help users understand where they are and what they can do next.

The design work included:

• Establishing a centralized template list as the starting point for communication management.
• Creating clear entry points for editing, previewing, and creating new communications.
• Designing visual controls that make brand customization more direct and understandable.
• Supporting structured layouts for banners, tables, email content, and reusable components.
• Making frequent actions visible through consistent icons, controls, and screen organization.
• Using preview states to connect configuration decisions to the final communication experience.
• Creating a visual system that supports branded communications while remaining practical for an internal Power App.
• Considering consistency, readability, maintainability, and reuse across the application.

The design intent was to make PowerComms feel efficient and approachable while giving users the control required to produce professional, branded content.

Copywriting and content design

Copywriting and content design were important to the experience because users need to understand both what they are creating and how each control affects the final communication.

The content-design work included:

• Naming and organizing communication templates and reusable components.
• Clarifying labels for banners, tables, email layouts, colors, fonts, and images.
• Supporting clear actions for creating, editing, saving, previewing, and reusing content.
• Making configuration choices understandable within the editing workflow.
• Providing a logical progression from template selection to final review.
• Defining terminology consistently across communication, template, and component experiences

The result is a content model that treats language as part of the interface—not simply supporting text added after the UI was designed.

Development and design-to-build collaboration

The development phase required translating the branded-communication strategy and UI patterns into a working Canvas Power App.

The focus was on preserving the intended template structure, visual customization controls, reusable component model, preview behavior, and content-creation workflow during implementation.

The design-to-build process included:

• Communicating page structures, interaction expectations, and relationships between templates, communications, and components.
• Supporting implementation decisions within Power Apps and the available environment.
• Translating brand controls into practical application interactions.
• Maintaining consistent layouts and visual patterns across the six core screen types.
• Balancing flexible customization with maintainability, scalability, and future template growth.