Shaping the UX Vision for Cloud Management
Overview
Azure is a cloud platform that lets businesses/individuals to build, run, and manage applications without owning physical hardware. One of the biggest challenges has been reliability, affecting both users and the business.
Working with a talented team of UXR, PM and SWE, I led end-to-end UX to improve cloud limit (quotas) management and increase reliability.
Year
2023 - 2025 at Microsoft
Role
UX/UI Design, Strategy, Research
Measured Impact
- Increased CSAT from 25% → 75%
- Reduced quota-related issues by 70%
- Cut cloud workflow failures by 50%
Microsoft Azure
Reshaping Cloud Quota Management UX
Year
2023 - 2025
My role
Designer
Team
Research, Engineer, PM
What's been done
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform that enables users to run and manage cloud resources. Quota management has long been a known pain point within the Azure experience.
In this project, I led UX strategy efforts to establish user foundation, align teams on a shared vision, and uncover design opportunities to improve the complex quota workflow.
Impacts
- Shaped a future vision (including AI opportunities) and aligned cross-functional teams
- Enabled execution of multiple UX initiatives grounded in user insights and strategy
- Increased CSAT from 25% → 75%
- Reduced quota and capacity issues by 70%
- Cut cloud workflow failures by 50%
The Problem
Why Are My Cloud Tasks Failing?
Cloud tasks were failing frequently due to cloud limit (Quota) issues. There were 3,000+ support tickets generated every month, impacting over 18,000 mission-critical workflows across 350,000 businesses worldwide.
There was a clear opportunity to help users manage their cloud limits proactively before hitting failures to ensure a smoother cloud experience.
I needed to better understand users and why limit management was causing failures.
Goal
Help users understand, manage, and resolve quota issues independently, reducing failures and reliance on support
Research
Bridging Assumptions to Insights Through Research
To understand the problem better, I conducted heuristic evaluations, interviews, surveys, and journey mapping to understand user needs. This revealed gaps in the current experience, user segments, workflows, jobs-to-be done, and key pain points.
Then, I mapped findings into a comprehensive journey map to highlight where friction occurred in quota workflows (image below).
These insights validated the problem and revealed three core pain points in cloud limit management:
Lack of guidance
Users don't know how to resolve issues when cloud tasks fail so they rely on support as a debugging tool.
Inefficient management
Current tools are hard to discover and don't scale for enterprise users, who find them inadequate for their needs.
Lack of visibility
Problems aren't visible until failure. More proactive information could help users catch issues earlier.
Strategy
Aligning Teams Around a Shared Vision
Research revealed a critical gap: Users had no way to prevent quota-related failures or resolve them independently.
This helped with product direction to focus on. I facilitated workshops with 30+ stakeholders to align the team on a solution framework focused on four pillars: guidance, efficiency, visibility, and self-troubleshooting.
Solutions
Help Users Prevent Failures and Recover Faster When They Happen
These are sneak peaks of solutions to help users manage cloud limits better, Solving for visibility, guidance, and efficiency
Find features faster, learn in the flow of work
Organized navigation + contextual walkthroughs
Manage at scale with target user tools
Saved filters and bulk actions for enterprise workflows
Resolve failures independently with AI-powered guidance
Copilot analyzes errors and recommends fixes in context
See how I brought this vision to life →[Bringing AI Guidance to Cloud Workflows]
Design Solution / Guidance
Guide users through key tools
Use the “Get Started” section to help users navigate quota services. Highlight essential features that support visibility, usage monitoring, and better quota decision-making.
Design Solution / Guidance
Surface key quota insights at a glance
Snapshot view offers users quick access to alerts, forecasts, and recent requests, helping them stay informed and make smarter decisions around quota planning.
Design Solution / Efficiency
Save filter sets
Enable users to save custom filter sets, making it faster and easier to revisit views tailored to their needs.
Design Solution / Efficiency
Cross-subscription selection
Allow users to manage quotas across multiple subscriptions, increasing flexibility and improving visibility for better decision-making.
Design Solution / Transparency
Improved entry point to request history
Improve visibility into past quota requests with clearer entry points and request status updates, helping users track progress with confidence.
Design Solution / Transparency
Estimated cost preview for better decisions
Display estimated costs upfront to help users make informed decisions when submitting quota requests.
Broader Impact
- Established a strong UX foundation that simplified complex workflows.
- Drove a shift from short-term fixes to long-term solutions.
- Facilitated cross-functional conversations to align design, product, and engineering around shared vision
