Gen Z ♥︎ Edge Mobile

Gen z ♥︎ Edge Mobile

Design an open and inclusive mobile browsing experience that Gen Z trusts across work, home, and school.

My Role

Led 17 designers from all levels and different product teams (Herding cats!)
Preparation & Logistics: online/offline setup, scheduling & space
Host workshop sessions & moderate the sprint process
Pitch to the studio / senior managers for product reviews

Manage tabs

How many tabs have you left open? So much information that hard to manage, but not worth saving as bookmarks either?

Try smart grouping and Quick Access to frequently used tabs!

Night Owl Mode

Night Owl Mode ≠ Night Mode

1 Night Only

2 Personalize Content

3 Innovative Info Instruction & Flow

4 Emotional Design

Social Collections

Want inspiration on the go, but current mobile browsers aren’t inspiring. Filtering useful information is so difficult.

Try collection recommendations to make search more efficient!

Connect with creators through consultant + Lite social.

#Hashtag

Hashtag on Edge is a fast, easy way to create and add content to a collection in the browser without leaving the page you’re on.

Fast and efficient, just like Gen Z!!

Background

Mission Statement

1

Design open and inclusive search, content, and browsing experiences that customers trust across work, home, and school

Better together... to create a seamless end-to-end experience across Search and Browse

Product Priorities

2

Customer Promise: Edge offers unique value across mobile and desktop

Epic: Converged mobile codebase + Basics and delighters across platforms

Metrics: Mobile DAU

Market Opportunities

3

Gen Z as Edge Business Swing Segments

Mobile generation with growing influence and different expectations

Goals

Identify product differentiators that deliver One Microsoft value via Edge mobile to customers

Advocate customer obsession through the design process and create customer-relevant stories that drive engagements

Bring products and designers between Edge mobile and Studio 8 better together

I facilitated:

Icebreakers

Proto-persona creation

Empathy mapping

Affinity mapping and HMW

A day in the life

Understand

I shared:

Introduction to the sprint

Product walkthrough

Research insights

Gen Z report

Why Gen Z

Mobile generation

Most of Gen Z has never known a world without the internet, and their first phone was likely a smartphone.

The importance of mobile to this generation is clear from the fact that 98% of Gen Z aged 16+ reported owning a smartphone.

If you want to reach Gen Z, you need to do it where they spend their time — on mobile.

Different expectations

As one of the youngest generations, Gen Z is expected to surpass millennials as the largest generation by the end of 2019, comprising roughly 32% of the population. *(2020: 26%)

Their spending power is growing. In the US, 16-22 year-olds spend $44 billion annually and influence an estimated $600 billion in spending. As more of Gen Z enters the workforce, companies without a strategy in place will fall behind.

Growing influence

71% of Gen Z believes brands and corporations should help them achieve their personal aspirations and goals, and over 50% ranked a brand’s purpose, values, and mission as its most important trait (millennials ranked it third).

Growing up with access to services like Uber and Spotify, Gen Z places value on access rather than ownership.