Azure Quantum is Microsoft’s cloud-based quantum ecosystem that enables learning building, and running of quantum applications through provider hardware, simulators and software tools. Telemetry revealed a low 14.9% onboarding success rate with over 85% of users abandoning first-run workflows.

I owned end-to-end product research and design to redesign 3 key onboarding workflows and the credits and quotas experiences, improving clarity, engagement, trust, and adoption. I identified the root causes of attrition, designed more effective workflows aligned with the Azure Fluent design system, and established UX leadership to formalize design direction, foster cross-functional collaboration, and drive alignment. Together, these efforts elevated product quality, aligned teams around shared UX outcomes, fostered a sustainable, user-centered design culture, and boosted new-user onboarding to near-70 % success rates.

I also contributed to Azure Quantum’s branding and documentation to further support alignment, onboarding and user education.

Timeframe: Apr ’21 – Sept ‘22

Team: Senior UX Designer (Me), 2x TPMs, 5x Quantum Software Engineers

My work: Research, Enterprise UX Design, Design system, Illustration, Branding, Marketing

Onboarding workflows initially only included Workspace creation and Overview page “Quickstart” exercises to submit a first quantum job. The Sample Gallery, Credits and Quota experiences, and the Credits program evolved from my user research and design direction, as well as cross-functional collaboration.

I designed the initial concepts for the Azure Quantum logo. Click here for details and more branding work.

Baseline Research included:

• Onboarding workflow telemetry - 14.9% of new users successfully completed the onboarding workflows, while more than 85% abandoned the process. Telemetry couldn’t explain why users were dropping at key points, and research was needed to uncover the details.

• An initial PM user study - Nine participants, ranging from quantum developers to researchers and decision-makers, were all unable to complete onboarding first-run workflows within an hour. Outside of the study, some participants ended up taking 48 hours, with others taking more than a week.

• Additional User sentiment study - Users felt the Azure Quantum onboarding experience should be more self-explanatory, claiming the experience was fragmented, lacked pricing details, and required frequent back-and-forth with documentation that created confidence barriers to making decisions.

I partnered with Product Management and Engineering leadership to cross-functionally socialize these insights and define the high-level UX Outcome, success metrics, and progress indicators.

High-level UX Outcome:

”Users can easily create an Azure Quantum workspace, submit a first quantum job, learn how to submit subsequent jobs, and clearly understand usage and pricing without contacting support.”

UX initiatives I drove across all work streams:

* This case study is focused on using Azure Quantum portal onboarding workflows to submit quantum jobs, and does not cover CLI, Quantum Developer Kit (QDK) / VS Code, or Azure Quantum Python SDK options for submitting quantum jobs.

SITUATION:

There are four main pages to Azure Quantum Workspace Creation:

Basics / Providers / Tags / Review + Create

Each page had several incremental steps with telemetry insights indicating attrition throughout the workflow, but no indication to explain what was causing it.

“Is it meant to look complicated? Because it does.”

- Research participant

PROCESS:

• Synthesized research insights and journey-mapped the user’s experience to provide visibility and a common understanding of the user’s current experience.

Users were not having a pleasant journey.😖

• Conducted a workshop focused on simplifying workspace creation, to socialize the design discussion, and gain team input and alignment on onboarding strategies

• This cross-collaborative approach provided a deep understanding of the user’s experience across the team, enabling co-discovery and co-definition of the desired UX Outcome, success, and progress metrics.

UX Outcome:

“First-time users can easily identify a clear path to create an Azure Quantum workspace and build a higher degree of trust and user confidence through initial success in the onboarding process.”

Success metrics and progress metrics:

Key initiatives -

• Optimized workflows — Collaborated with engineering to identify opportunities to provide hint text and prefill values with known user data.

• Simplified onboarding flow — Reduced decision points, pricing friction, and cognitive load, enabling faster first-job submission and higher completion rates.

• Strengthened framework alignment and advanced Fluent components — Partnered with Azure Fluent PM and Design leadership to ensure consistency across components and patterns, and contributed to component variation design, documentation, and cross-team socialization.

• Streamlined compliance — Worked with Microsoft Legal to simplify provider Terms & Conditions acceptance, removing a key blocker in workflow setup.

• Enabled data-driven iteration and alignment — Created fully functional prototypes to facilitate design discussions, user research, and stakeholder feedback and alignment.

• Validated through testing — User sentiment favored fewer, simpler choices and a “quick-start” low-code path before exploring advanced configurations.

• Aligned documentation — Partnered with content teams to update and unify documentation with the revised user flow and design vision.

RESULTS:

Quick Create path

Advanced create path

Utilizing account details, we determined if the user had a current subscription and preselected the Quick create path, a two-step workflow that enables near-instant workspace creation. If no subscription was detected, users were led down the Advanced create path.

This work significantly improved onboarding success, enabling first-time users to create an Azure Quantum workspace in minutes and build a higher degree of trust and user confidence through initial success.

Workflow optimizations and the addition of the Quick Create path increased workspace creation success rates from 14.9% to 42%.

SITUATION:

User research revealed that the Overview page and its Quantum Computing Quickstart and Optimization Quickstart options were overwhelming for first-time users, and gated initial success. This process involved setting up your local environment in VS Code, adding the Azure Quantum Developer Kit (QDK) extension, installing any Python updates, and connecting Jupyter notebooks through an Azure Quantum workspace to submit programs to a remote quantum service. If the user wanted to do both quantum computing and quantum optimization, then they had to go through both of these setup configurations. Users were looking for an easy win to take back to their organizations, and these experiences left them feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.

PROCESS:

I conducted initial research with Quantum thought leaders, researchers, developers, enthusiasts, and practitioners to understand users’ perspectives and guide redesign discussions. By enabling cross-functional participation, I facilitated the co-discovery and co-definition of a UX Outcome (ideal user experience), success metrics (goals), and progress metrics (indicators) that we aimed to achieve for the Overview page experience.

UX Outcome:

“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.”

Success metrics and progress metrics:

Research highlighted two clear themes that users required to adopt Azure Quantum:

• Users needed first-run success, subsequent-run success, and accessible support and documentation, to demonstrate capabilities to their organization.

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

Focusing on Jupyter notebook integration and technical feasibility, I conducted Figjam workshops, design lunch-and-learns, and UX office hours, enabling visibility, participation, and a cross-functional understanding of user intentions, expectations, and goals.

These exercises aligned engineering and product management with a user-centered perspective for the Overview page redesign and the repositioning of “Quickstart” exercises.

• Engineering leadership was initially hesitant to prioritize the Jupyter notebook option over local environment setup, so I couldn’t reprioritize the Jupyter notebook option as the “Quickstart” option. Aside from this Quickstart renaming idea, I developed a design proposal to meet the needs of both new and returning users, and enable additional learning opportunities for all users, then conducted usability tests to gather user insights on this idea and present them back to the team.

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

  1. Start with Azure Quantum Notebooks – a guided, interactive starting point for beginners.

  2. Access Quickstart Exercises – the local configuration option, and more advanced setup for more experienced users (still labelled Quickstart 😖).

  3. Start with Learning Materials – links to documentation for discovery and deeper user exploration.

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

I conducted one final A,B,C,D usability test with six participants and included all options we had created for the Overview page. These last two variations, which repositioned Jupyter Notebooks as the “Quickstart” option, resonated best with users, with 6/6 users preferring variation two, which presented Getting Started as “Quickstart without install” and repositioned the Local configuration option in the navigation alongside Learning Materials. This option mitigated decision fatigue and decreased the likelihood of early abandonment by deprioritizing the more challenging path.

RESULTS:

The redesigned Overview page focused the navigation on initial success through “Getting started” experiences and Sample Gallery, while providing “Local configuration” options for more advanced users and empowering engagement for all users through additional “Learning materials”.

Additional benefits of this option included moving Quota usage to the Operations left-side menu, and co-locating 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.

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

SITUATION:

Drawing from user research insights, workshops and UX office hours, I partnered with engineering to define the Notebook Gallery and its intent, to teach foundational taxonomy, structure, process, and lower barriers to first success in quantum computing, while fostering long-term engagement through sample-driven task completion using a curated collection of pre-built Jupyter Notebooks. I had created some initial comps for discussions, but due to my focus on competing parallel initiatives, this initial UI was created by engineering and moved to production before a full UX refinement cycle could be completed.

PROCESS:

Notebook Gallery work began by setting up telemetry and gathering usage data over a 20-day observation period that provided the following insights:

• 30% of users who visited Notebook Gallery didn’t take any further action, leaving the page.

• 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 (so 29% of users who initially took action to clone a notebook actually tried to execute a single 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.

• In two scenarios where users were trying to submit a quantum computing job using two separate providers, there was a 75% failure and a 100% failure, respectively, due to not provisioning the correct provider during workspace creation.

Additional user research, coupled with this telemetry, was incorporated into workshops and UX office hours discussions, helping to define the UX Outcome we intended to provide users and the success metrics we aimed to improve.

UX Outcome:

“Both new and returning users can easily explore, learn, and build through hands-on, partner-driven examples and submit quantum computing and quantum optimization jobs through Jupyter Notebooks.”

Success metrics and progress metrics:

I invited the cross-functional team to participate in usability research, revealing to them firsthand significant usability and communication gaps that led to user confusion, frustration, reduced engagement, and hindered quantum job submissions.

• Provided a valuable perspective that enabled a more constructive cross-functional user-centered mindset in workshops and UX office hour discussions

• Fostered shared understanding and accountability, aligning teams around UX Outcomes and measurable success metrics.

Key Research insights - leading to low engagement, abandonment, and fewer job submissions:

• 3 of 6 participants were unfamiliar with Jupyter Notebooks or their intended use.

• 4 of 6 participants were unable to complete the task of copying and submitting a notebook within one hour.

• 2 of 6 participants expressed a need for a clearer “Hello World” style introduction to orient new users to the gallery.

• Advanced samples were difficult to find; gallery navigation lacked clarity.

• Inconsistent notebook explanations and missing contextual guidance.

• Unclear messaging, poor labeling, and weak calls-to-action.

• Search bar placement and results were ineffective.

• Workflow confusion around submitting jobs and provider selection.

• Provisioning blockers prevented new users from submitting samples.

• UI issues such as unused icons and irrelevant tags cluttered the interface.

• No introductory content to support first-time users or guide initial success.

Guided by telemetry data and direct user feedback, I focused design efforts on delivering our UX Outcome through a more intuitive, engaging, and user-centered experience. I created all design media, facilitated cross-functional discussions, and led iterative research cycles that rapidly informed and refined the vision.

Key initiatives -

• Clarified content hierarchy through more informative category titles, call-to-action taglines, and page messaging.

• Renamed “Notebook Gallery” to “Sample Gallery” to better communicate purpose and context.

• Refined card components—standardizing titles, explanations, and calls-to-action to emphasize Azure Quantum’s provider-agnostic and code-agnostic capabilities.

• Collaborated with Quantum engineers to design more engaging and educational sample experiences.

• Aligned with Azure Fluent design system PMs and designers to ensure consistency with Fluent interaction patterns and visual standards.

RESULTS:

Telemetry results:

• Within 2 months after implementation, close to 50% of all users who landed on the Sample Gallery cloned a notebook, completed the notebook sample workflow, and submitted a quantum job.

• Drastically reduced the 75-100% failure rate of Quantum Computing (QC) gallery samples’ run-ability to a 0% failure rate, through provisioning all FREE QC and QO providers by default during Workspace Creation, enabling users to clone and submit both QC and QO samples upon Sample Gallery entry.

User research results:

After 6 months, 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.

“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

The Sample Gallery redesign balanced the needs of first-time and advanced users, featuring “Hello World” options to guide new users through their first quantum job, while providing advanced samples and learning resources for returning users.

SITUATION:

User research on the Credits and Quotas experience revealed that many users faced difficult conversations communicating funding needs within their organizations. Users explained that the Credits and Quotas experience wasn’t helping these conversations, describing the existing dashboards and visualizations as confusing, ambiguous, and lacking actionable insights, making it difficult to interpret usage or justify ongoing investment in quantum research and using Azure Quantum.

PROCESS:

I conducted user research to gather insights, highlight opportunities for optimization, and frame the above challenge to the team, focusing our efforts on presenting a more intuitive way to display quota and credit details.

Key Research insights -

Across two separate studies (12 participants total), users consistently identified five key pain points that eroded comprehension, confidence, and overall trust within the Credits and Quotas experience.

• Confusing, subjective data visualizations made it difficult to interpret usage or value.

• Missing subscription quota and credit breakdowns limited transparency into available resources.

• Insufficient pricing and usage data left users unable to make informed, high-cost decisions or facilitate meaningful budget discussions with their organizations.

• Unclear credit program details and lack of self-service options for requesting credit increases or upgrades led to user frustration.

• Dependence on Azure Quantum support for basic inquiries increased operational overhead for support and product management teams.

Cross-functional participation throughout this research enabled co-discovery, co-definition, and alignment on the UX Outcome and the success and progress metrics necessary to guide a more transparent, user-centered design direction.

UX Outcome:

“Users can clearly understand credit and quota usage to easily make determinations about their organizational usage needs, and take action to remove credit and quota limitations and alleviate pricing concerns.”

Success metrics and progress metrics:

Initially, there was nothing to measure with telemetry in the experience, as it lacked tasks, workflows, calls-to-action, or instrumentation to apply telemetry to. User research provided the following details.

Aiming to achieve our UX Outcome and improve trust in the Credits and Quotas experience, I focused design efforts on clarity, transparency, and aligning on common usability patterns, validating these solutions through user research and socializing insights with the team.

• Collaborated with the Azure Fluent framework team to explore data-presentation patterns, aligning on a table layout commonly used for displaying usage results.

• Iterated on minor data visualizations within these table components, driving component evolution, documentation updates, and broader system adoption.

• Developed functional prototypes to facilitate design discussions, gather feedback, and refine the vision through rapid iteration.

• Iteratively A/B tested table-based proposals to evaluate how effectively they communicated credit and quota data in a familiar, easily interpretable format.

• Socialized research findings and design proposals across Product Management and Engineering via cross-functional presentations and weekly UX office hours, ensuring alignment and shared ownership of outcomes.

RESULTS:

Created the Credits and Quotas central hub for users to view and manage their Azure Quantum provider resources effectively.

Credits dashboard -

Quotas dashboard -

“ 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

The redesigned Credits and Quotas experience provided valuable user insight, inspired trust in Azure Quantum, and lowered the financial burden of learning quantum computing and quantum optimization. Users could manage quota availability and credit usage, request upgrades, apply for grants, and better plan for future projected costs and funding discussions within their organizations.

Final usability testing showed a 70% (7/10 participants) success rate for first-run workflows with quantum job submissions, marking a major leap in user trust and onboarding efficiency for the Azure Quantum program.

These UX design outcomes significantly improved user confidence, engagement, and productivity, enabling Azure Quantum users to achieve their short-term quantum goals, plan for funding conversations, and develop long-term quantum strategies within their organizations.

UX initiative results -

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