Mariona Guiu

Remote work showed a gap in digital collaboration that physical Post-it® Notes naturally fill with their quick and spontaneous approach. The key was to create a digital solution that would improve teamwork and bring distributed teams closer together.

This was over a year-long project that started with a thorough research phase based on previous work done by 3M, our client. They identified four focus areas: working alone together, specialty software, analog-to-digital, and the synthesis ecosystem.

Together with the product lead, we conducted three rounds of deep interviews with "modern flexible workers" from around the world. Those showed that our users needed space to work individually and think alone before sharing with the team, even during collaborative sessions. One key challenge was then clear: how can we support teams collaborating while keeping an individual aspect in the experience?

Another important goal was helping users synthesise large amounts of information during brainstorming. To support this, we came up with features like note stacking, AI powered features like smart clustering, and voting, to which I helped define the UX for.

I focused on creating a clear information architecture, including dashboard structure, user access management, and the navigation and interactions of the whiteboard infinite canvas and note experience: create, duplicate, move, group, vote, and edit.

After launching the MVP, we worked on further priorities like locking objects, shortcuts, and more AI-powered features as well as webcam note capturing to bring that physical to digital interaction.

Post-it® for Microsoft Teams launched in the fall 2022 as a subscription model collaboration tool for MS Teams both as integrated web app and mobile app.

Its simple interface let users create and share boards with their team. They could create notes, group them and change size, color, and font to organise ideas visually.

A key feature was the Voting tool, which helped teams pick which ideas to focus on and move discussions forward. Building the search function was important so users could quickly find the notes they needed.

The app also had AI features like smart sorting and grouping notes by topic, that made organising information easier.

Later on, we added webcam capture so users could turn physical Post-it® notes into digital ones, and Zen mode, which gave people a private space to brainstorm without the pressure of others looking.

The biggest Post-it® digital release in over five years, built as a co-innovation between 3M and Microsoft. A paid collaboration product shipped into Microsoft Teams, designed across three organisations: 3M as client, Framna as agency, and Microsoft as platform partner.

• 1,000 active users in 2 weeks on a paid product with no free tier beyond the trial.
• Shipped as a paid B2B product via Microsoft AppSource with enterprise security requirements.
• Featured by Satya Nadella in the Microsoft Ignite 2022 keynote on launch day.
• Recognised internally by 3M's CEO, confirming the project's place in company strategy.
• Built for Microsoft Teams, a platform with 250M+ monthly users at the time.
• The Post-it® mobile App received the Google Material Design Award in the Motion category, one of only three apps recognised worldwide that year.

Working with Microsoft Teams taught me that technical limitations can directly shape what users experience, which made me realise how crucial it is to understand the environment your product lives in and then take it into account when designing.

• Figma
• Figjam
• Notion
• Jira / Confluence
• Slack
• Testflight
• React
• Kotlin
• Lokalise
• MS Teams