Kaizala began in 2016 as a Microsoft Garage project: a chat app with actions built in, like polls, location check-ins and job assignments, so that a small business team or a community of thousands could get work done inside the conversation. It graduated into a product and became the first Microsoft product launched outside Redmond. It launched in India in July 2017, went worldwide to Office 365 customers in April 2019, and was folded into Microsoft Teams in 2023. It is now on the Microsoft Garage Wall of Fame.
In 2016 I was asked to redesign its app character, the visual language that would become Kaizala’s identity. UX team: Manager Jayawant Tewari, peers: Bijoy Raveendran, Bhaumik Kaji, Andre Rodrigues and Sonal Srivastava.
The slides below are from my presentation at the time, as they were.
The problem
The app was recently laucnhed as a preview, but it looked generic. Next to every other chat app on a phone, it lacked polish and a visual identity of its own.
A new visual language
I spent a few weeks surveying users and stakeholders on what Kaizala should feel like, then built the language up from there.
Color
Type
Icons
Speech bubbles
Cards
Actions arrive as cards in the conversation, so every card type and state needed to belong to the same family.
Depth and frame
Before and after
The proposal was adopted, and shipped as Kaizala’s identity.
2017 update based on user feedback
In 2017 we changed the colors again, for three reasons. Kaizala needed to align more closely with the Microsoft brand palette and corporate strategy. Its positioning had changed, so it needed a clear distinction from WhatsApp. And users in India’s, especially tier 2 and tier 3 cities, didn’t find the original brand color appealing.
The bigger lesson for me personally was that users in emerging markets perceive color and UI differently from Western audiences. Although I grew up in an emerging market myself, my design philosophy and education were built for Western sensibilities and user needs. As a result of this user feedback, we used denser colors and busier backgrounds to make users feel comfortable and match their everyday environment and aesthetic preference.
