PowerPoint Speaker Coach.

The goal of this feature was to help speakers deliver presentations with more poise and polish. PowerPoint launched "Speaker Coach" which uses artificial intelligence to provide feedback to people during and after rehearsing an upcoming talk.

Role: Designer for original concept, Design Manager for productization

I had the privilege of discussing the design process and impact of this feature in a Medium article.

Problem to be solved

People have a pervasive fear of presenting to others, which PowerPoint does not address. This gap leaves users anxious and underprepared for an important task. We aimed to reduce this anxiety, boost user confidence, and improve the overall presentation experience, aligning with our goal of increasing user engagement and satisfaction.

Workshop

I ran a cross functional team workshop to brainstorm concepts. We ideated on these questions.

  • How can we make practicing less painful?

  • What’s the best way to help users understand the benefits of practice?

  • Is it possible to help users prep prior to the practice experience?

  • Are there ways we can make the rehearsal feel as similar to giving the real presentation?

  • What are some strategies to encourage repeat practice sessions?

  • Can we build the feature so users can see improvements over time?

Workshop Concepts

  • Focus

  • Reminders

  • Education

  • Gamification

  • Progress

Visual Design Explorations

I was torn about how closely we should stick to the product's usual visuals. I aimed to find a sweet spot between keeping things consistent and adding a fresh, friendly touch. So, I dove into tweaking the visuals and playing around with the illustration style at the same time.

Clean, infographic style

Colorful, game-like aesthetic

Aligned with Microsoft design language

V1 Design

For the first version of the feature, we landed on a simple experience that would listen for certain qualities such as Pace, Filler Words, and Sensitive Phrases, provide unobtrusive real-time feedback and present a report at the end. Longer range thinking included helping the user craft an engaging presentation, breaking the rehearsal into bite size chunks, and adding a rehearsal timer with real time feedback. This final version of the report was created by one of my direct reports, Siliang Kang.

Impact

When feature shipped it immediately garnered positive reviews and feedback from critics and customers:

“…Presenter Coach for PowerPoint. It’s  just brilliant. And while I’m still surprised I didn’t think of this fix myself, I’m glad that PowerPoint now looks like it might make me a better speaker instead of promoting bad behavior.” Computer World.

Also PC Magazine. Digital Trends.

Thanks to its strong start at launch, the feature not only survived but thrived. The team keeps refining and building on it, ensuring its continued growth and success.