Microsoft Learning Experiences
Reaching Business Leaders Through Scalable, Strategic Education
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Microsoft partnered with Suz Howard and Studion to design a high-impact digital learning experience aimed at non-technical business decision makers—an increasingly critical audience in cloud purchasing decisions. Faced with dense, technical content that overwhelmed this group, the team applied the High Engagement at Scale framework to transform complex Azure concepts into a clear, engaging, and actionable learning journey. The result was a scalable, story-driven course that not only supported Microsoft’s business growth goals, but also demonstrated how digital learning can play a vital role in marketing and sales by enabling better, faster decisions from business leaders.
Learning Experience Vision and Blueprint
THE CHALLENGE
As cloud adoption surged, Microsoft recognized a strategic gap: the people making cloud purchasing decisions—non-technical business leaders—often couldn’t make sense of the dense, technical education available.
Microsoft’s learning team saw this not just as a learning problem, but a business opportunity. To grow Azure, they needed to equip decision makers to understand cloud value clearly, confidently, and fast.
Suz Howard and Studion were brought in to lead the design of a digital learning pilot that would do just that—making complex content understandable, engaging, and scalable for a high-impact, underserved audience.
This wasn’t just about education. It was a signal of one directions that digital learning is headed: deeper into the marketing and sales funnel, helping business leaders understand what they need to buy—and why.
THE WORK:
1/ Making the Dense Digestible
We started by mapping the learning gaps and business goals. Learners described existing content as too technical, too abstract, or too long. What they needed was:
Clear language
Business-relevant examples
Guidance through unfamiliar territory
2/ Leveraging existing knowledge
To move fast, we leveraged the High Engagement at Scale framework, a design model developed by Studion and Suz Howard to scale learning without sacrificing depth. It centers around five design principles—three of which became the backbone of our strategy:
Learner-Centered Content: Right-sized, role-relevant, and jargon-free
Active Learning: Interactivity that drives clarity and confidence
Real-World Outcomes: Practical tools and cases that map to real decisions
3/ Prototyping High Engagement
We designed and tested a series of "Signature Moments"—interactive, high-leverage experiences that would make the learning stick. These included:
A compelling hook to pull in busy executives
A birds-eye system view to demystify Azure’s architecture
Role- and industry-specific case studies
Interactive tools to explore cost-benefit decisions
Use Right Away Takeaways for continued application
These prototypes proved how even the most complex content could be made approachable and actionable when designed with the learner in mind.
4/ Pivoting with Purpose
As the project evolved, Microsoft decided to build the final course within their existing Microsoft Learn platform—requiring us to simplify and scale back some of the more innovative elements.
Rather than lose momentum, we adapted. We brought the spirit of High Engagement into a more traditional format—preserving the story-driven, learner-centered structure and prioritizing clarity and business relevance.
The final course, Get to Know Microsoft Azure for Business Professionals, is now publicly available and serves as a proof point for what digital learning can do—not just to educate, but to drive adoption and sales.
THE IMPACT:
This project helped redefine the role of digital learning at Microsoft—from a technical upskilling tool to a strategic lever for sales enablement and market education.
It showed how to make dense, complex material not just digestible, but compelling—for the audiences who hold the purchasing power.
And it gave Microsoft a replicable, scalable framework—High Engagement at Scale—for designing future learning experiences that connect product value to business outcomes.