As Microsoft Viva expanded rapidly, its applications evolved without a unified design language, resulting in an inconsistent suite experience.
by combining emerging Fluent design patterns and Expressive data viz explorations with Viva's evolving needs, we explored a shared design framework that improved consistency, strengthened suite coherence, and established a more distinctive Viva identity.
Viva Glint, Engage & Insights
Because tackling the entirety of the Viva suite would be daunting for an exploratory project, it was decided to focus on three of the most popular and fully developed apps: Viva Glint, Viva Engage and Viva Insights.
Viva Engage Refresh
Viva Engage is Microsoft’s employee community and communication platform, evolved from Yammer and designed to help people connect, share knowledge, and participate in conversations across an organization.
This exploration focused on reducing visual noise and improving scanability while elevating the two primary behaviors: creating new posts and engaging with trending discussions. A key part of the approach was the application of emerging Fluent design patterns, bringing clearer hierarchy, more intentional spacing, and stronger interaction cues to improve usability at scale. By aligning the experience with the latest Fluent principles, we aimed to create a more cohesive, expressive, and efficient community experience within the broader Viva suite.
Viva Glint Refresh
Microsoft Viva Glint is an employee engagement and “voice of the employee” platform that enables organizations to run continuous feedback programs through surveys, analytics, and actionable insights that inform culture and performance improvement.
This work focused on modernizing Glint within an evolving Microsoft Viva design language, incorporating more dynamic and expressive data visualization patterns developed in parallel through the Expressive Data Viz initiative. The redesign improved access to insight dashboards and introduced richer, more narrative-driven data storytelling.
It emphasizes clarity in complex organizational data, strengthens cross-suite consistency across Viva applications, and reinforces Glint’s role as a decision-support system for leaders and managers.
Viva Insights Comparison
Microsoft Viva Insights is a workplace analytics and employee experience platform that helps individuals, teams, and leaders understand and improve how work gets done through privacy-protected insights and recommendations around productivity, collaboration, and wellbeing.
This work focused on modernizing Viva Insights by bringing greater cohesion across its personal, team, and organizational experiences. We restructured complex information hierarchies by simplifying the existing card-heavy design which helped to improve clarity and decision-making.
Similar to Glint, we introduced more expressive data viz patterns to better surface only the insights that matter. The redesign strengthens consistency across the Viva suite and evolves Insights into a more unified, human-centered decision-support system for understanding work patterns and driving healthier, more effective ways of working.
Design System Impact
The work helped define shared patterns across Viva applications, including layout structure, charting conventions, and information hierarchy rules.
The impact was less about final, production-ready redesigns and more about challenging existing patterns and demonstrating alternative approaches to structuring and visualizing complex people data. These explorations helped unlock more consistent cross-suite experiences while still giving each application the freedom to evolve its own identity within a shared design language.
