“I have confusion with the docs pages”

- quantum researcher

“Too much information, its easy to get lost”

- quantum decision maker

“UI is confusing”

- quantum developer

“Pricing needs clarification”

- quantum decision maker

UX OUTCOME:

”Enabling users’ workspace creation and submission of a first quantum job, by harnessing initial engagement, designing a more intuitive onboarding first-run workflow, while enabling better visibility into usage.”

SUCCESS METRICS:

1. Simplify Azure Quantum Workspace Creation - Azure Quantum workspace creation, storage setup, quantum provider selections, and pricing option selections

2. Enable clear Overview and Getting Started experiences for new and returning users - involved a number of heavy workspace choices

   • Quantum Computing or Quantum Optimization

   • CLI and/or templated Jupyter Notebook workflows

3. Enable first job submission and better user education by redesigning the Sample Gallery UX - Introduction to Jupyter Notebooks and tutorials that helped users learn about quantum programming options and build their first quantum solutions.

4. Improve conceptual clarity and usability of the Credits and Quota experience, boosting trust in Azure Quantum - Enable usage and credit management, and cost clarity.

My role:

User research | Design | Design socialization and workshop leader | Cross-collaboration with Quantum Researchers, Product Management & Engineering teams | Alignment with Azure Product Management, Branding, Marketing, User Research and Design teams.

SITUATION:

There are four main pages to Azure Quantum Workspace creation: Basics, Providers, Tags, Review + Create, with a number of incremental steps within each page. Telemetry insights indicated attrition throughout each step of the workflow, but could not explain why.

Targeted research highlighted specific points of friction that contributed to the confusion and high abandonment rates.

• Confusing page messaging

• Lack of calls-to-action

• Lack of familiar Azure pattern alignment and frustration with a disjointed workflow

• Frustration and confusion on basic information inputs

• Costly and under-informed provider decisions

• Frustration with Terms of Service (ToC) agreement positioning - ToC details were displayed with each provider during provider selection, but the ToC acceptance workflow was located at the end of the workflow on the Create and Review page

• Frustration with overwhelming documentation

Quantum Workspace creation - where we started

SUCCESS METRIC:

“Instil user trust in Azure Quantum and provide a clear path to create an Azure Quantum workspace for first-time users, by building a higher degree of confidence step-by-step.”

PROGRESS METRICS:

• Gain cross-functional understanding and alignment of the current user journey

• Align with Azure’s Fluent design system framework

• Define clearer calls-to-action, and help users get through each step of the workflow creation process more easily.

  Breaking down the needs of each Workspace Creation step:

  • Basics -

    • Provide clear page direction

    • Enable form completion optimizations

  • Provider selection -

    • Provide clear page direction

    • Streamline Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy acceptance

    • Provide clearer pricing information

  • Tags -

    • Message as optional, possibly eliminate

  • Review and create -

    • Provide better call-to-action

    • Revise Terms of Service requirements

    • Provide a easier read of all selected providers, associated plans and pricing

• Provide clarity to online documentation throughout the workflow.

PROCESS:

• Conducted targeted user research and I focused on the current experience journeys of quantum thought leaders, researchers, developers, enthusiasts and practitioners.

• Synthesized research insights and journey-mapped the user’s experience.

Users were not having a pleasant journey.

• I socialized user journey insights cross-functionally, promoting visibility, design participation, and gaining alignment on a common understanding of the user’s current experience, user’s intentions, expectations, and goals using Azure Quantum.

• Conducted a cross-functional Workspace Creation workshop with product management, engineering, and leadership stakeholders, leveraging user research insights to explore one-click workspace creation and trial run workflows, socializing the design discussion, driving visibility, and gaining team input and alignment on onboarding strategies

• Separately workshopped more inviting, informative, and effective calls-to-action for page messaging, titles, and taglines.

• Partnered with Azure Fluent framework PM and Design leadership teams, enabling design system alignment.

• Partnered with engineering to identify low-hanging workflow optimization opportunities.

• Worked with Microsoft Legal counsel to streamline the provider Terms & Conditions experience.

• Fluent Design system component creation, evolution, socialization, and documentation

• Created fully functional prototypes for design discussions to enable research and design iteration, stakeholder feedback, and drive alignment.

• During a round of validation testing, user sentiment revealed a strong preference for less complex choices during workflow creation. Users sought a deeper understanding before optimizing their workspace or selecting costly provider options, and appreciated the idea of a quicker, low-code experience for their first Quantum job submission experience.

• Taking this research and workshop insights into account, I designed a quicker, streamlined workflow that minimized the amount of user input and choice during workspace creation and reduced heavy pricing and provider decisions.

• Worked with documentation teams to revise documentation for alignment and to reflect design decisions and workflow enhancements.

RESULTS:

Gained cross-functional alignment on the user journey, through an amazing cross-functional team effort (including senior leadership participation) to solve some difficult UX problems, and create two workspace creation workflows, an Advanced Create path and a Quick Create path.

• Advanced create path optimizations:

  • Redesigned the end-to-end workflow, aligning with Azure Fluent design specifications

  • Standardization on more effective page messaging, titles, and taglines enabled workflow clarity and more effective calls-to-action

  • Optimized user data input - Identified a number of inputs that could be prefilled and others that could use smart-defaults or suggestive placeholders.

  • Streamlined, and better informed the Terms & Conditions acceptance for both workflow creation paths

    • Advanced Create path - Colocated provider T&Cs acceptance with the Provider “Add” function, enabling intentional association of the agreement with each provider selection.

    • Quick Create path - FREE providers added during this workflow had no way to accept for each included provider (see below👇🏼)

    For both paths, additional text was colocated with the “Create” button on the last step of the workflow to confirm acceptance of all selected provider Terms and Conditions that read “By clicking create, you accept each included provider’s Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy”

  • Provided more informative pricing information for each provider plan and highlighted all available FREE plans

  • Improved the UX of Azure Quantum workflow documentation, aligning with the improved UX - Learn more >

• Quick-Create path -

  • Didn’t include the heavy provider selection choices present in the Advanced path, but rather selected all FREE providers by default

  • Utilized clarity in messaging and more effective calls-to-action

  • Required ONLY a unique “Workspace name” and region selection to create a workspace, and enabling the ability to edit all workspace details post-creation.

Providing a choice for users, I designed an initial page that included the Advanced Create path and the Quick Create path in cards, with the Subscription input pre-selecting the user's current subscription or one that was their primary, if neither were available then only the Advanced create path was available for selection.

• Advanced create pre-selection - with Quick create disabled

Advanced Create path

The Quick create path was only two steps, with two keyboard inputs required for workspace name and region selection, enabling a near instant workspace creation path.

Through optimizations and including the Quick Create path, workspace creation success rates improved from 14.9% to 42%.

Leveraging user research insights, telemetry, and cross-functional collaboration to design a smoother onboarding experience, this work elevated workspace creation success rates, improving them by nearly 3x.

SITUATION:

Overview page served as a central user management hub, with a launching point for Quantum services, and surfaced multiple options for submitting a first Quantum job through the Getting Started workflows.

User research showed that the Overview page and the Quick Start options were confusing and overwhelming, making it difficult for first-time users to determine the easiest path to begin their Azure Quantum journey.

On Overview page load, users were presented with two “Quick Start” options. Quantum Computing Quickstart and Optimization Quickstart. Research revealed users felt these options were quite complex, and immediately frustrated and overwhelmed users who were looking for an easy win to take back to their organizations.

Both options involved setting up your local environment in VS code, adding the Azure Quantum Developer Kit (QDK) extension, include Python and Jupyter Notebook support if needed, install any Python updates, then connect Jupyter notebooks through an Azure Quantum workspace to submit programs to a remote quantum service. If user wanted to do both Quantum Computing AND Quantum Optimization, then they had to go through both of these setup configurations. Users were starting then abandoning these workflows due to insufficient calls-to-action, high complexity, and low trust in Azure Quantum services and pricing options.

SUCCESS METRIC:

“Provide a launching point that focuses new users on the easiest pathway to submit a first job, while supporting returning users and enabling sustained user education for all users.”

PROGRESS METRICS:

• Research and analyze the user experience with page content.

• Build cross-functional understanding of user needs and pain points.

• Define and surface the simplest workflow for submitting a first quantum job as the primary Getting Started path.

• Design a clear, engaging experience with concise messaging and strong calls-to-action.

• Remove or reposition content that distracts from the primary decision.

• Align UI with Azure Fluent design patterns.

• Revise documentation for clarity and effectiveness.

PROCESS:

I conducted user-centered research with Quantum thought leaders, researchers, developers, enthusiasts, and practitioners to understand their user-centered perspective and guide redesign discussions.

• Synthesized and socialized research and design, through Figjam workshops, design brownbags, and UX office hours, enabling visibility, participation, and a cross-functional understanding of user intentions, expectations, and goals.

  • A clear theme emerged: to adopt Azure Quantum, users needed first-run success, subsequent-run success, and accessible support and documentation, to demonstrate capabilities to their organization.

  • One participant suggested integrating Jupyter notebooks (details) into Getting Started exercises, providing pre-made interactive environments as starting points for learning and exploration.

  • I led a design workshop with engineering stakeholders and quantum practitioners to socialize the Jupyter notebook integration concept and assess technical feasibility.

• Through these efforts, the page repositioning and Jupyter Notebook integration gained broad support.

  • While engineering leadership was initially hesitant to prioritize the notebook option over local environment setup—and I couldn’t yet label it “Quickstart”😖, I developed a proposal to meet the needs of both new and returning users.

  • The design featured a three-panel layout that catered to both new and returning users.

    1. Jupyter Notebook – a guided, interactive starting point for beginners

    2. Local Environment – advanced setup for experienced users

    3. Learn More – links to documentation for deeper exploration

• I ran another round of usability research, indicating that the most prominent choice was still the local configuration option, with 4/5 quantum researcher study participants selecting this more advanced method over a much simpler option of using templated/premade Jupyter notebooks sample within Azure Quantum.

• When asked why, participants said…

“because it’s labeled quickstart”.

• After another short redesign iteration, I created two variations:

  • Variation one - featured a three-panel layout, but labeled Jupyter Notebooks as the “Quickstart” option.

  • Variation two - completely removed all other calls to action on the page and highlighted the Jupyter Notebook option as “Quickstart without install”

Variation one -

Variation two -

Additional benefits of this option included:

• Streamlined usage visibility – Moved Quota usage to the Operations left-side menu and co-located it with Credit Usage and Job Usage, creating a more intuitive entry point and a holistic view of usage while removing clutter from the Getting Started workflows.

• Design consistency – Partnered with the Azure Fluent design system team to ensure alignment and gaining support for consistent visual and interaction patterns.

• Content alignment – Collaborated with the documentation team, sharing user research insights and proposed solutions, aligning documentation with the streamlined experience.

RESULTS:

I built cross-functional awareness, engagement, and impact through user research, participatory workshops, and ongoing socialization with the product team and stakeholder leadership. Insights from this work delivered early wins by revealing implementation inconsistencies, opportunities to optimize workflows, and gaps in documentation, while also shaping long-term product innovation and strategic vision.

• Research confirmed that the simplest path for new users was submitting a first job through pre-built Jupyter notebooks. Once introduced, users moved smoothly from this step into the redesigned Sample Gallery (covered in the next case study) to run their first job.

• Text revisions added to the workflow boosted all user’s confidence, improved comprehension, and increased success in navigating the Getting Started exercises.

• Advanced users did not find friction in the deprioritization of Local Configuration.

Additional improvements included:

• Usage visibility: Moved Quota usage to the Operations menu alongside Credit and Job usage for a more intuitive entry point and holistic usage view, while removing clutter from Getting Started workflows.

• Design consistency: Partnered with the Fluent design system team to align components and patterns, reducing engineering overhead.

• Content alignment: Collaborated with documentation teams to produce concise, highly relevant content that better prepared users and lowered support demand.

Rapid research and data-driven design iterations shaped the Getting Started experience to support both first-time and advanced users, providing a clear path to submit a first quantum job, options for subsequent runs, advanced local configuration, and ongoing learning opportunities.

* This work sparked the creation of the Notebook Gallery (explained in the next micro case-study below👇🏼), enabling user discovery, exploration and learning through templated Jupyter Notebooks to submit Azure Quantum Jobs.

SITUATION:

As noted earlier, engineering participation in user research for Getting Started workflows inspired an effort to build a Notebook Gallery, a curated collection of pre-built Jupyter Notebooks.

The gallery was designed to give users a seamless entry point into quantum computing and optimization, enabling them to explore, learn, and build through hands-on, partner-driven examples. By lowering the barrier to first success, the notebooks provided both educational value and a practical foundation for real-world experimentation.

User research revealed that the Notebook Gallery was confusing and difficult to use, creating friction that deterred engagement and hindered job submissions.

Key pain points:

• Unfamiliarity with Jupyter notebooks in general.

• Difficulty locating advanced samples and navigating the gallery.

• No way to use the same notebook and switch between quantum providers.

• A useless search bar placed in a high-priority position.

• Unclear page messaging and titles.

• Lack of helpful calls-to-action.

• Inconsistent or unhelpful notebook explanations.

• Confusion around workflows for submitting quantum jobs.

• No introductory content to guide first-time users.

• Ineffective UI elements such as an unused information icon on cards and irrelevant tags.

These issues led to low engagement, more abandonment, and fewer job submissions.

“ The page appears visually monotonous and is not optimized for specific use cases ”

- Quantum Educator

PROGRESS METRICS:

“Create an intuitive, inviting gallery experience that drives engagement and user education, for new and returning users,” enable learning for taxonomy, structure, and process while guiding them through sample-driven task completion and quantum job submission.

PROCESS:

I led cross-functional quantitative and qualitative research to inform a data-driven design process, aiming to alleviate short-term friction and shape a long-term vision.

• Beginning with Notebook Gallery telemetry over a 20-day observation period:

  • 58% of users who accessed the Notebook Gallery, cloned a notebook to use.

  • 50% of these users actually utilized the notebook and ran at least one cell (executed a task).

  • Only 17% of users who landed on Notebooks Gallery, cloned a notebook, then completed the notebook sample workflow, and actually submitted a quantum job.

• Conducted a user research study with 6 Quantum researchers to test their ability to submit a Jupyter notebook sample, inviting the cross-functional team for socialization, exposing frustration, and their undervaluing of the Notebook option.

  • 3/6 research participants commented that they didn’t know what a Notebook was

  • 4/6 were unable to complete the task of copying and submitting a Jupyter Notebook within an hour.

  • 2/6 participants mentioned they would like to see more of a Hello world introduction to the gallery.

• Cross-functionally socialized these telemetry and research insights, and workshopped revisions, discussions included:

  • Creating more informative categorization titles and helpful call-to-action taglines and page messaging

  • Revising the page title “Notebook Gallery” to be more informative

  • Workshopped the card component, standardizing titles, explanations, calls-to-action, and options to highlight Azure Quantum's provider-agnostic and code-agnostic approach.

• Partnered cross-functional and cross-team with Azure Fluent design system PM and Design teams, ensuring alignment with Fluent Design patterns and system initiatives

• Created fully functional prototypes for design discussions, enabling feedback, iteration, and solidification of design and vision.

RESULTS:

Better UX was achieved through several key improvements, creating an intuitive, inviting, streamlined, more familiar and engaging experience.

• Renamed “Notebook gallery” to “Sample Gallery” highlighting the multiple partner offering samples.

• Designed enhanced categorization that provided order to the page and surfaced targeted content, differentiating Quantum Computing and Optimization

• Included welcoming call-to-action Hello World notebook samples for both Quantum computing and Quantum Optimization options

  • Provided a familiar introductory experience to unfamiliar technologies

  • Enabled visibility into the easiest path for quantum job submissions

  • Showcased Azure Quantum’s provider and language-agnostic flexibility through interactive variations, and hands-on, partner-driven examples

• Enabled a more consistent and intuitive end-user experience and a quicker engineering implementation by aligning with the Azure Fluent design system and benefitting from known card patterns.

  • Added a variation to Fluent’s card pattern with the inline provider selection that highlighted Azure Quantum’s provider-agnostic and kernel-agnostic approach.

  • Designed consistent Sample Gallery cards: standardizing provider logo display, character counts, and adding a visible button for balance and more visible call-to-action for users to “Copy to my notebooks”

• Removed Clutter:

  • Removed the useless search bar (possibly needed in the future)

  • Removed the useless tags (possibly needed in the future)

  • Removed the useless information icon (possibly needed in the future)

• Revised documentation and added useful information about the Sample Gallery workflows

Creating an intuitive, inviting, streamlined, more familiar, and engaging experience.

“ They're super, super stripped down, like the simplest possible kind of thing, really just showing how it all just fits, which is perfect. Because it gets you started, so it does what it's intended to do, which is getting going and started, so it's really great! ”

- Quantum explorer

88% of surveyed users agreed with the statement for the redesigned experience:

“Sample Gallery is integral to learning, exploration, and understanding of Azure Quantum's offerings”.

Rapid research and design iterations balanced first-time and advanced users’ needs, offering a clear concise call-to-action for the easiest and quickest path to submit a first quantum job, with the ability to learn more for returning users and if additional information was required.

SITUATION:

User research for Credits and Quotas experience revealed that many users were experiencing difficult conversations within their organizations for funding quantum research. Users claimed the Azure Quantum Credits and Quotas experience and its data visualizations were confusing, unhelpful, left too much up for interpretation, and lacking concrete usage and funding data that researchers could take back to their organizations.

All participants in two separate studies (12 participants) aligned on 5 key points of frustration with the Credits and quotas experience, which weakened comprehension and diminished trust.

• Lack of standardization in a unit of measurement across providers

• The use of subjective data visualizations

• Lack of a breakdown between Subscription, Quota and Credit data

• The lack of useful pricing information, or specific use data left users without confidence to make high-cost decisions or to structure effective decision-making conversations within their organizations.

• Lack of visibility and clarity into how credits worked, how credits are applied for, utilized, and increased when more are needed.

The lack of clarity around the limited credit program and the absence of control over increases or upgrades within the experience drove users to call Azure Quantum support, incurring costs on our support and product management teams.

PROGRESS METRICS:

“Provide new and returning users with clear visibility into credit and quota usage”

• Enable clear delineation between provider usage within one comprehensive perspective

• Enable easy access to upgrade or increase allocations at the workspace and subscription level, and contextualized by their selected provider plan.

• Enable visibility into different payment plans

RESULTS:

Created the Credits and Quotas central hub for users to view and track quotas, monitor credit usage, and manage their Azure Quantum provider resources effectively.

• Redesigned the Credits and Quota dashboard experience within a standardized table presentation

• Standardized on a simple bar graph data visualization, per quantum provider subscription and displayed usage and credit availability as a percentage used out of a whole amount.

• Presented associated costs and the ability to increase and upgrade plans as needed.

• Created the Quantum credits program, to mediate financial barriers by enabling users to apply for credits and grants, alleviating some of the financial strain on their organization, and simplifying initial funding conversations. - click for details

“ What really made the difference was these credits, this credit program that allowed us to experiment with what we were doing without using our own budget, which is very limited, so that was for us a game-changer. ”

- Quantum Innovator

“ I think Azure Quantum is really cool. Its pretty straight forward to setup and use. So I definitely think that it could get even cooler and I would love to keep using it. “

- Quantum Innovator