What we did ↓
Microsoft
Interviews
Literature Review
Process Sketching
Thematic Analysis
In-Progress
Innovation Failure Rate is High
A commonly cited statistic is that 95% of new products ultimately miss the mark (MIT Professional Education, citing Christensen, HBS). We see the same pattern for one of today’s emergent technologies: Generative AI where 95% of organizations are getting zero return from GenAI investments due to brittle workflows, lack of contextual learning, and misalignment with day-to-day operations (MIT Project NANDA (2025). The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business). We teamed up with Microsoft Research - Health Futures to address this.
My Role
Product Designer
Methods
Affinity Mapping, Process Sketching, Thematic Analysis, Prototyping
Tools
Miro, FigJam, Figma, Zoom
Collaborators
Anita Rani
Aashi Roy
Allison Tanaka
Project brief ↓
❗
Early-stage innovation is rich with insight, but cross-functional teams lack visibility into each other’s work and often misalign on priorities, disrupting decisions and momentum.
How might we better align business and UX teams in early-stage innovation through shared data, tools, and AI to improve cross-functional collaboration?
Where we started ↓
What's Out There
While many tools foster open-ended creativity and collaboration, none are specifically designed to help UX & business teams work together to assess viability and align early
40
papers
We wanted to see the current work out there including innovation approaches, artifacts, frameworks, methods, tools by role, and by company contexts
18
semi-structured interviews
Our major opportunity with business strategists, designers, researchers, and project managers to get granular details about their workflows, challenges, and tools.
2
workshops
3 co-design activities and a group discussion to generate new ideas & features with cross-functional team members.
What we found ↓
Currently, there are 2 common approaches to innovation
But, there is a new opportunity for teams
But, what would a solution look like? ↓
Insights to Design
Hitting the drawing board ↓
Roadblock ↓
⚠️ Visualizing a solution that rethinks how teams collaborate and exchange information proved challenging, as it required making invisible workflows, assumptions, and sensemaking practices tangible.
How we broke it down ↓
Product Requirements Document
Sketching, Combining Sketches, and Sketching Again
But, how would the system work? ↓
The Product
Key Features
How Did It Perform?
View the nitty gritty details
Reflection
Designing for process is challenging
Designing for process is challenging because individuals have their own ways of sense-making and approaching innovation. Our team benefited from conducting semi-structured interviews, which allowed us to adapt conversations based on what was shared, and from running a workshop that combined visual and reflective activities to surface both diverse and aligned perspectives.
