Behind the Scenes with Office Graphics PM Aimee Leong

(Originally posted April 6, 2022 By ~ Microsoft 365 Insider Engagement Team)

Enhanced visual expressiveness

Growing up in Australia, Amy Leon was intrigued by profound questions.

“I thought I wanted to be a theoretical physicist,” she said. “I thought questions about things like dark matter were really interesting.”

But like many millennials, her imagination was captivated by the rise of creativity in personal technology. She had an eye for design, even in something as simple as a to-do list app.

“There was this app called Wunderlist, and the user experience was amazing,” she said. “The animations made me feel really celebrated, so I started following the blogs of the people who made this app. I was fascinated by how technology could make the world a more fun and beautiful place.”

Amy Leon

Amy quickly realized that what she really wanted to do with her career was to help create those kinds of beautiful products and experiences. So after graduating from college, she joined Microsoft as a product manager on the Office Graphics team.

“We’re building things that are at the intersection of productivity, self-expression and creativity, which is something I’m really passionate about,” she said.

We spoke with Aimee about her cutting-edge work on Office graphics, the impact of responsible AI at work, and the role the Office Insiders program plays in helping Microsoft ship high-quality products.

What Office feature are you most excited to work on?

Amy: I think so Premium Content LibraryWe first launched in April 2020. Previously, we asked users to go outside of Office to search for media, but it takes smart users to know how to acquire or create licensed content that fits their message. Users want high-quality in-app experiences that surface relevant content in context. This effort has been a huge success, both inside and outside of Office.

Ultimately, Office is about digital communication. When we communicate in person, there are many elements that add nuance to the message: facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, fashion, and expression. In Graphics, we think about how we can apply this individuality and expression to digital storytelling.

So what we’re talking about is a massive collection of images and other media material?

Yes, that’s it. And more! We’re trying to create an ecosystem for all of Microsoft that surfaces content based on information about you. The first thing we need is a massive cloud catalog of content. Images, icons, illustrations, emojis, videos, audio, templates, and other expressive things. So we’re working with Microsoft’s design teams to create media, and bringing in artists and vendors to create unique content for the collection. And we’re looking to expand that even further by integrating with external libraries.

Then we work together across Microsoft 365 products to bring this content to you. We started with Office, but our technology now serves companies more broadly in places like SharePoint, Hololens, Planner, Teams, and more. We’re growing very quickly. It can be overwhelming, but it’s fun. We also layer intelligence to understand what people are doing and surface the right things at the right time, so you’re not just sifting through a sea of ​​content.

Social media has made people more adept at expressing themselves digitally. We don’t want them to go on social media and say, “This is a really fun world,” and then go to work and say, “Oh, back to boring work.” We want them to be able to use all the tools they use to express themselves outside of work at work.

Aimee Leong with a colorful mural in the background

What should you consider when deciding what types of media to add to your premium content library?

That’s been one of the biggest challenges in curating content. I try to make sure that each content set is balanced across all ethnicities, genders, ability levels, age groups, etc. We never want someone to go into our content library and feel like it’s not relevant to them or that they’re being marginalized as a certain culture or type of person. That’s one of the reasons we love Cartoon People, because people can mix and match different body parts and hairstyles with it. Choose what resonates with you.

Relevance is another important pillar that guides our content buying. One of the things we’ve done is curate sets around different holidays, anniversaries, or events. As we build relevance, we have to balance curation with personal bias, so we work with Microsoft’s Enterprise Resource Group (ERG) to make sure we’re representing the topic authentically. They’re a group of people who are very passionate about a particular topic. We asked them what conversations are happening right now. How can we build relevant content? How can we make sure we don’t miss any part of the conversation?

Our team knows that the lens through which we see the world is very small, and we are trying to serve many people. There are two teams that work closely together at Microsoft: the Global Readiness team and the Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAI) team. These teams are very good at broadening the lens through which we see the world.

Can you give me an example of geographical considerations?

Take things like wedding-related graphics and media. We don’t want users to search for “wedding” and only see US-based wedding content. There are so many different types of weddings and related celebrations around the world. It was a really fun exercise and helped me open my eyes to the world and develop empathy.

Wedding images from PowerPoint’s premium content library

What does the term “responsible AI” mean in this context?

The RAI team is working on software features that integrate intelligence to account for all types of people. Behind every intelligent system, there are some human rules, and when we create these human rules, we put a lot of bias into them. Intelligence is a factor that amplifies bias in products, because instead of giving users all the options, we recommend a few based on what they are like and what they want at that moment.

When intelligent features are released to a global audience, it can be very alienating to some people. The RAI team has a lot of knowledge in this area, which helps guide Microsoft product teams like ours.

Why is the Office Insiders program important to your business?

Office Insiders are a very important audience that we rely on before releasing features to our entire user base. Of course, we do as much internal validation and testing as we can, but since Microsoft serves a global audience, there is no way we can understand all the workflows and user scenarios associated with each feature. So Insiders are the first opportunity to catch all the unique edge cases and issues that we haven’t considered.

The Insider community is very passionate about trying out features and are excited about the innovations we deliver. When they test a feature, we have people from all walks of life try it out. We can stress test it and make sure it’s very high quality before we release it to a broad production audience.

What does the future hold for graphics in Office?

I think the challenge we’re solving right now is scalability. As our services expand across Microsoft, we’re focused on how to scale to handle 10x the integrations, 10x the content, and 10x the number of creators. We’re working to make our pipelines and APIs faster, more powerful, and more flexible. And we’re trying to figure out how to create a platform where artists, third parties, and everyday users can all participate and contribute to the Microsoft content ecosystem.

All of these questions about scalability clash with our priorities for appropriateness and accountability. As we explore scalability, we need to find interesting solutions that can scale while maintaining trust in the Microsoft brand.

What books or movies inspire you?

Like Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli animated films. Ponyo, Spirited Awayand Totoro. I love the animation style, creativity, and honesty in storytelling. I like that in my role I get to work closely with creators and artists. Because I think artists are really honest. What they create looks like them. It’s like you can meet Hayao Miyazaki when you watch his movies. His style and personality shine through in his work.

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