ROLE
Lead designer, Word
PRODUCT
Office agents
SURFACES
Copilot app & Word
RESEARCH
73+ organizations
The problem
Agents could produce something that looked right but wasn’t ready to use. Good results took long prompts, and Word had to feel part of one agent family without losing what makes writing different.
What we learned
In Word, people didn’t want a conversation. They wanted progress. They wanted a first draft fast, built from the documents they already had. The question wasn’t whether AI could create something, but whether it could create something relevant to their work.
What I designed
Instead of a blank prompt box, I moved to clear, direct controls, and designed it to ask only when it has to, since a little clarification helps and too much becomes friction. Word got its own behavior, not a copy of the shared one. Most of all, I treated the document itself as the experience, grounded in your own files and fully editable.
01
Start with what you want, and what you’re working from
02
Clarify only when it changes the result
03
Show real progress, never a blank wait
04
Hand back a native, editable Word document
05
Keep refining, right in Word
said they got started faster
said they saved drafting time
Research across the agents, 73+ organizations. Team results; I led the Word design.
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