Mircosoft Edge - Lead to reimagine world's #2 used browser for 240 million daily users
As a senior design leader for Edge design team, I work closely with Rob Frye - head of design, Xiaodong Fan - VP of Microsoft, and lead China’s Edge design team on various initiatives. My notable work includes leading redesign of the fundamental of Edge, building key feature package to re-imagine browser, visioning strategy to integrate AI with Edge and more. Over the past 2 years I helped Edge grew its DAU to over 240 million, with over 26% market share globally, and become #2 browser in the world.
Visit Edge BrowserRedesign the fundamental of Edge, it’s a design initiative but a product direction
Although Edge made its remarkable growth in the past 4 years since adopting Chromium and become world’s #2 used browser, it’s problems also start to reveal. Our users rate Edge as professional, but also tedious and cluttered, it’s less appealing compare to other browsers, especially Chrome. The massive amount of features that have been added to Edge made it’s framework shaky and hard to understand for users. So we realized it is the time to re-think our framework and tip the image around in our users heart, wo we can keep up in the industry.
85%
Edge users have 2 browsers
25%
Edge users find Edge unappealing
The re-think of Edge browser is a product direction. Our product principles are build around 3 key values: simple, quality and beautiful. And here is how we do it:
• Build separation between web content and browser content.
• Build modular design system to reallocate the moving pieces.
• Build on top of Fluent design system but with Edge’s identity.
• Build modular design system to reallocate the moving pieces.
• Build on top of Fluent design system but with Edge’s identity.
The before and after results are stunning to us. One of the findings was, we tested new Edge with other browsers (covered up their brands) with over 40 candidates. The image of Edge browser was tipped just by its look and feel.
Re-imagine Edge, the new internet computer
The browser, in the past 10 years hasn’t changed a lot, however the internet has. People used to store things on their computer and hard drives, but now it’s on their cloud. People used install apps on their computer and now most apps are web apps. If I lose my computer today, none of my memories will be lost, I can get them any time from the web. And browser is the window through websites. So we feel this might be the time browser makes some changes.
One of our endeavors was to help people multitask on browser. As we believe multitasking is a big part, when browser starts to be more llike OS. I build the feature split screen from 0 to 1 to help people better multitask in the browser. It is by far the most successful feature that has been built into the Edge browser.
The results of Split screen stunned us. It is the first time a single feature moves market share in Edge browser. It lifts the market share over 0.4%, that is over 80 million dollars when we convert it into ads revenue. It is the highest rated feature in almost all user studies. We see our fans writing on forums saying its the reason they are moving from Chrome to Edge.
0.4%
Browser market share is gained
80 million
Ads Revenue is gained
Why is browser the best platform for AI
In the end of 2022, the wave of LLM storms across the world. Everyone wants their business to have something to do with AI. We at Edge also believe AI is the future, but more than that, we believe browser is the best platform for AI. I think in the future a general platform with these 3 qualities dominates "AI service". And based on these three key principles we shipped our first try with "Edge + Copilot".
• Edge is accessible for user at anytime
• Edge has access to all user data
• Edge has access to all available apps
• Edge has access to all user data
• Edge has access to all available apps
People are very excited about Copilot when it is first shipped. And we do too, and we believe it could change the browser industry. So our daily user of Copilot in Edge climbed to 2 million daily users very soon. However not everything is perfect, despite the rising DAU, we have some alarming patterns - the engagement seems low. So we discovered that the AI should be more integrated with the browser.
80%
Users only interact once in a session
15%
Week over week user retention
We started to think, what if we can build Copilot really within the main flow of Edge Browser. What if our browser can organize for us, what if the browser can browse for us, what if the browser can do tasks for us? Here are some really exciting concepts we are exploring, check the example here.
Team & people
I lead a team full of talented designers and vendors for Edge. Our team is located across Suzhou and Beijing. The photo was shot at Suzhou Shiquan Road 😊.
