Microsoft Design Challenge 2022 Experience

👉Case study can be found here

February 11, The time starts… Now!

I came to know about this challenge on LinkedIn. It was quite exciting as this challenge was unheard to me and the opportunity to intern for Microsoft was a dream. Being a nationwide competition, the stakes were high. At that point in time, I was still in my learning phase and considered myself a novice. (I still do, learning never stops)

Immediately I opened up the website to register and that is where all of my excitement came to fall. This competition was only for students graduating in 2023/2024. Being a second-year student I was not eligible to participate. After thinking about it, something inside me wanted to do this challenge as a “mock test”, to better analyze my weak zones and time management skills. I didn’t have anything to lose, quite the opposite rather as I would have a case study for my portfolio. Now the fun part begins; Thinking!

Chapter 1: Preparation and scouting

This being my first design challenge, I had no clue how to present my project, what the judges were looking for, and so on. To begin I started by browsing the internet and looking up the previous winners of this challenge. I spent close to 5 days researching and understanding how to present the deliverables.

Ⅰ. Looking up previous submissions

I looked up Google and found the case studies of previous winners of the design challenge. Created a notion page to note down all the common aspects of the submissions of the winners. Browsing through a lot of projects, I started to see a pattern. Took inspiration, and took notes.

How did this help? I Noted down all the similarities, unique aspects, presentation style, and style guide, and created a checklist for myself which was to be included in my final submission.

Ⅱ. Talk. Talk. TALK!

After tracking down the winners, I messaged all of them on LinkedIn. Asking them about their experience, squeezing out any information I could get which could help me with my submission. I reached out to Kshitij from whom I took a lot of inspiration for my project (even this article :P), who was very helpful and took out his time to clear any of my doubts. Sometimes my questions were absolutely stupid but he was patient enough and answered those as well.

Ⅲ. Documentation

I made a notion page to document all the leads, articles, and whatever I could find related to this challenge.

Ⅳ. Ideation

I always take my phone in the bathroom while showering. You may ask why? The reason is that mostly all the ideas that come to my mind happen while I take a shower. The problem sector I chose was -Well Being. I decided to work upon a solution that incentivizes the entire process of working out and exercising. The problem statement was; How to improve the well-being of working professionals in a way that does not feel like a task. The process included identifying the problem, understanding the user pain points and them coming up with a digital solution. Easier said than done :)

The ideation phase took close to 4 days, 2 days were spent researching, forming questions for interviews, conducting them, and forming a questionnaire.

Juggling college studies, learning and this project was difficult but fun. I spent close to 3+ hours every day on this project. For 10 days straight, all I did was ideate subconsciously, thinking about the ifs and whys.

I followed the Double Diamond Design process.

Research- I conducted interviews and created a questionnaire(which received 15+ responses)to understand the pain points of the users. Before the interview, I had already prepared a list of questions to ask the participants to keep the process consistent. For the secondary research, I browsed Twitter, Reddit, and Google to collect data and understand the problems faced more clearly. While doing this I noted that during work from home, a lot of working professionals have started to feel back pain from the long hours they spend sitting. I noted these problems to later assess them in my project.
Brainstorming- I put myself in the shoes of different types of users to better empathize with them and form a solution that caters to most if not all types of users.
👉 The complete case study can be found here

Read the case study

Ⅴ. Tidying up! Phewww 😓

2 days were remaining, the deadline was on 21st February. The content was ready, what now remained was the presentation and the promo video. I was scared of the later part because I had never created a promo video or any product video. Panic!!

As said earlier, the notion checklist page came in clutch so that I don’t miss anything in my presentation. Because the number of allowed pages(20) is limited, I had to be very careful about what information I used. The true meaning of the word “concise” I understood that day. After completing the presentation, all that was left was to create the promo video. It took me 1.5 days to understand how to create one and another 5 hours to gather all the assets for my video. It was midnight, the submission was at 9 AM, and it was a race against time. I hid the clock to not focus on it.

At 2 AM I was done with the After Effects part of the video. Relieved, I started the render and to my shock (cliffhangers form a good story, trust me!) the render stopped and gave an error at 95%. It took 40 mins to reach 95%. I thought that it was a bug and rendered it again, same story. After doing this one more time, I improvised and cut short the video to only 94% of the original video. It got rendered but I had wasted a lot of precious time, I had no time to slow down. Quickly I launched up Premiere and started to create the story which I had formulated. Highlights of the video were-problem emphasis, uniqueness of the solution, and accessibility.

The video plays a key role in the initial round because that is what catches attention most as video content is entertaining and easier to digest. It builds the story you are trying to narrate.

🪄 The deliverables are now complete. What a relief. Oh wait, it’s 7:30 AM!!

Promo Video for Submission
I made my submission at 8:15 AM on 21st February. Knowing that I was not eligible this year, I did not expect a response from the team.

I was happy and proud knowing that I completed the challenge. It was a great learning experience and I encourage all the eligible folks to participate.

After a month I received a mail that read that I was not eligible and that they will not be considering my project.

Ⅵ. What I learned

The Problem statement should be crystal clear to you. Spend some time while writing the problem statement.
It is imperative that you document everything somewhere
I believe that the problem you are trying to solve should be very specific. Trying to create a generalized solution for a wide range of problems can lead to something with no depth to it which means that it solves problems partially and none of the problems is solved fully.
Time management and smart utilization of time are key
There is never a perfect project, stop overthinking and move on with the process.
Research well. Secondary research will save your time and also will help you note the pain points quickly (make sure to double-check the authenticity of the article). Learn how to conduct good interviews, and how to formulate questions. Data synthesis after the session is the most important part.
Don’t get overwhelmed by other’s submissions :)
TALK TO PEOPLE! It helped me immensely in my submission
You will make mistakes, it is a part of the process. Get up and get going!
Be honest and enjoy the process. Don’t take any shortcuts, it will most probably come back to trouble you during the entire process of selection.
It was an enjoyable experience for me. See you, next year folks! 🎩