EXPLORE STORIES
Three stories of people using Microsoft products to showcase the Microsoft product ecosystem
Problems & Goals
The marketing trend at this time was to tell stories of “real” people using products and software to keep customers in that company’s ecosystem. Microsoft opted to try this approach, with a focus on helping sell the Windows Phone.
Solution
The Marketing team had three stories they’d created and had assets from which we were to create online stories. A team of three designers divided up the stories and went to work. We wanted the pages to be a fully immersive experience. Since I had prior experience “romancing” products using CSS animations to bring content to life, I took lead.
Responsibilities
Art Direction, Research, Wire-frames, Visual, UX, and Interaction Design, and Animation.
“Road Trip”
The Windows Phone team created a story about how three friends planned and took a road trip from Seattle to Canada to showcase Microsoft devices and apps. I focused in on this story since it lent itself to the most interactive experience.
“Hootenanny”
This was a story that a junior designer created using a white background. Since it was about a party, music, and a cool cat, the Creative Director asked me to make it feel more like a party with a more jovial feel. I created a dark party background and showcased parallax images of the cat.
“Holiday Cookies”
The was first story we did. The design and template I developed were used as a basis for our other stories (I didn’t do the final design on it however).
High Value Story - Pilot
I helped develop the High Value Story pilot that we tested to ensure that it resonated with customers. I developed and pitched the design, then the designer of the project took it and ran with it to produce the final design. This concept relied heavily on interactive and transition elements with CSS animations. Due to time constraints the final design was a scaled down version of this concept. The Pilot was a success but the cost of creating a custom story with custom photos and video was too costly, so we ultimately created the above three stories using existing marketing materials.
