Modernizing the Edge browser
Team
1 designer (me)
Role
Design envisioning
Product strategy
Executive buy-in
Overview
Flatten the browser - reduce the visual noise by taking out all the containers and drop shadows around first-party content (Copilot side pane, NTP, settings) and let web content go full-bleed.
Don’t ship the org chart - even though Copilot and Edge are different teams, users don’t care. Make the ‘integrated AI companion’ actually integrated by building it with browser theme tokens
Reduce engineering needs - let’s undo the custom modifications we do to the Chromium package we inherit. It requires engineering resources to maintain and the costs don’t make a meaningful difference to users.
Today's default browser UI
Today's themed browser UI
Proposed default browser UI
Proposed themed browser UI
Proposed new tab page
Proposed settings
Impact
Saw opportunity for improvement and worked on this outside of my normal responsibilities.
Consulted with engineering, system designers, feature owners, and leadership to cost implementation barriers and garner buy-in.
This vision has been set as our browser product goal.