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.

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.