Introducing SharePoint design ideas

I agree with DaveGlanville and hope Microsoft takes the following at heart:

Do Microsoft actually run their ideas past SharePoint admins at "normal" organisations? I'd happily take part in such a panel or vote in a forum as to what the real world sees as priorities for development. I'm aware there are ways of voting for features and fixes but that tends to be to resolve existing issues raides by users rather than voting on solutions that are instigated by Microsoft don't seem to address a real problem.

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A lot of the latest features and improvements look to be aimed at scenario's that don't apply to 80% of the tenants and its users. In this specific feature it would indeed be great if images could be taken from the organisation library. And it would be even better if this could be limited to specific permissions and/or could be turned off. Also, if you'd take a look at another change, co-authoring, that's also something that in reallife scenario's is almost never used for a SharePoint page. Maybe in huge organisations, but even than I doubt it would be used a lot. Pages are no Word-documents and are mostly authored by one person at a time.

Why don't focus on things as:

- Improvements to the new look of SharePoint lists, specifically return the drop-down for views.

- Power Apps support for content types.

- Json support for multiline text fields.

- More styling for tables.

- Let inserting images always choose from the image selection screen where you can add images by organisation assets, web search, site asssets etc. Some image selectors still only let you upload straight from the PC, without the ability to choose from already available sources.

- Create a dedicated content type for news pages, in stead of the currently (mis)used site pages.

- Enable recurring events for modern calendar.

- Print support for custom Power Apps list forms.

- Make it able to disable image tabs "Web Search" and "Stock images" when inserting an image.

- etc.

Would love the option to restrict access to specific sp sites, users, and admins to prevent misuse of the brand in a large company with multiple divisions and departments. For example, once the branded font is enabled, currently it can be applied to any sp site.

Hi DaveGlanville 

Thanks for your reply, and for the book recommendation! I hear you on no one ever looking the brand guidelines. It's not there yet (after all we have to start somewhere!) but part of the long-term vision for Design Ideas is that it becomes more or less a living brand guideline in collaboration with the brand center. So, it can be configured by admins but will also have enough awareness of your specific site and page styles to independently suggest designs within your standards. 

Some substantive steps we are taking towards this currently include: 

•  Respecting the text styling of your previous section in a majority of your subsequent suggestions (coming soon)
•  pulling Design Ideas images from org assets rather than stock assets whenever possible (in prototyping)

So, all in all-we hear you, are on the same page, and the usage data and feedback we are getting now are essential to getting us to that end goal as quickly as possible. 

 "As such, we need to give users a choice of one or two designs that we have created to meet the guidelines."- could you tell me more about what you mean by this? Do you currently have commonly reused sections?  If you could create your own section templates and design ideas could suggest into those, would that help design ideas feel more customized? 

Hi Sara_Cummings 

Thanks for your response. You ask "Is there anything else we should be aware of when it comes to respecting branding style? If you don't mind me asking, what is the most disruptive element of our current suggestions?"

Our Branding guidelines will include a specific colour set, how and where we use our logo, fonts, etc - pretty standard guidelines that you can find here: https://prdsitecore93.azureedge.net/-/media/files/contact-or-visit-us/advertise-with-us/visualidentityguidelines33mb.pdf?rev=b6269ec00ef545ef91abaded8adf33af&hash=FB363EFE272DD6D19C01170E11F474E7

Like most guidelines, people won't read them! Even for those that do, there is little value in them spending their time trying to make a site comply as opposed to just using one that has been done for them. And that assumes they would know how to make the changes, which won't be the case for most users. As such, we need to give users a choice of one or two designs that we have created to meet the guidelines. 

In addition, as per good UX practices, we don't want users to have to think and work out how each individual site works. The look and feel need to be the same, with common elements in the same place on every site. This is not only more efficient for the user but builds confidence as the site is familiar to them even if they haven't visited it before. If these concepts are not widely understood by product teams at Microsoft, may I very politely suggest sharing some copies of Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think, Revisited"? It only takes a few hours to read. It may be 10 years old but has stood the test of time. 

The most disruptive element of your current suggestions is that it will not allow me to turn off all the designs we don't want and only show the custom ones we do want.  

Thank you for your response. It feels strange only because we work at the same organization.  All good - I get it. Thank you for your response. 

Hi tmess22 , Design Ideas is available for both Windows and Mac users. If you aren't currently seeing it, that means you are probably in our current control group. 

For context, our team often introduces our new features as experiments. This allows us to see how our work impacts more- broad metrics than just feature usage. This means that currently only half of users are getting Design Ideas, which is why you aren't seeing them just yet, but you will very soon! 

Hope this helps 🙂

Hi DaveGlanville and Tasmania, thank you for your concerns around design ideas and branding. As we continue to grow this feature, it's our top priority to make sure we are suggesting within your brand and site standards. Our crew has taken your concerns to heart, and we are currently investigating how we could use your organization assets rather than our stock images in image suggestion. We are also working to develop a deeper awareness of the styling of the specific page we are suggesting into and incorporate that intelligence into our suggestions. 

Is there anything else we should be aware of when it comes to respecting branding style? If you don't mind me asking, what is the most disruptive element of our current suggestions?

hi grant_jenkins, thanks for your comment. I hear you on this potentially going against your branding requirements, and I'm sorry for any confusion this feature may be causing. 

On our end, we are currently collaborating with our brand center feature team to offer a delightful integration in future releases.  In response to the feedback and great ideas mentioned in this forum, are also currently investigating ways to use your org assets instead of stock content in image suggestions. Would this help design ideas fall within your branding standards? Are there any additional things we could do make sure we are aligning with your site styling?

As for discard changes, I've forwarded your feedback to the appropriate parties on our coauthoring team. You aren't the first to comment on this, and I know they are taking the feedback to heart. 

How come design ideas is not available for Mac users?

I am in 100% agreement with DaveGlanville and grant_jenkins. Features like this may be great for your customers without established brands, but they're absolutely not appropriate for customers that have established brands that don't want users to be creative outside of the parameters set by branding teams. Customers absolutely should have the ability to turn off these sorts of things. This feature does not solve problems for a lot of your customers, it just creates new problems. grant_jenkins's point about the removal of Discard changes and how that will affect this is spot-on. 

Like DaveGlanville asked, is there any sort of year-long panel where Microsoft discusses potential changes with actual customers to see if there is a widespread desire for them? The way Microsoft uses its products internally is not an indicator of how customers in other industries use them.