Designing Seamless Collaboration
Product Designer · Microsoft Loop
Loop’s big idea is that a page can be anything. The catch is that when a page can be anything, it’s easy to get lost in it. I joined the Loop core team at Microsoft in 2022 to make that flexibility feel easy.
Flexible, but hard to follow
Loop gave people freedom but few handles to hold on to. Pages grew long and were hard to scan, layouts felt rigid with no way to fold things away, content didn’t adapt well across screens, and settings were scattered.
Structure, without the rigidity
My rule was to add structure people can use, never structure they’re stuck with. I started with how people find their way around: an auto-generated table of contents gives every page a spine, and collapsible headers let people fold away what they don’t need. Then I reworked how content flows across screens, automatic by default with manual adjustments when people want control. Last, I pulled customization into one contextual panel with quick toggles, so changing how a page looks never interrupts the work.
From helpful to essential.
As adoption grew, people responded well to the new structure and flexibility. The table of contents and collapsible headers quickly became essential, helping teams find their way, organize and stay focused. Reflow kept pages working across screens, and the settings panel made customizing a page feel effortless.
Loop became easier to move through and easier to make your own, without losing the freedom it was built on.