Microsoft: Who Hacked? Facliltator Dashboard

Project Overview

Background

With growing ambitions to have a real-time game, Microsoft asked us to expand Who Hacked? The challenge: transform the game into a multiplayer experience that could scale to 100+ concurrent players while enabling facilitators to oversee, moderate, and troubleshoot in real time.

As the lead product designer, I worked with a lean team consisting of just a project manager, art director, developer, and myself. Despite the compressed schedule and scope creep, we were able to collaborate closely with Microsoft and deliver this major expansion in a tight four-week timeline.

Goals + Opportunties

Goal

1

MVP Definition

Quickly define what a multi-team, facilitator-led session required to function.

Goal

2

Communication

Enable smooth messaging between teammates and facilitators.

Goal

3

Clarity and Control

Create an intuitive dashboard that gave facilitators clear oversight of both the overall session and individual team progress.

Design Process

Define

Because this scope was added mid-build, we needed to rapidly align on must-have vs. nice-to-have features. Working with Microsoft, we prioritized:
• a facilitator dashboard to monitor both team-level and session-wide progress,
• session controls for starting/stopping the game,
• communication tools that allowed for teammate-to-teammate chat, facilitator-to-team messaging, and global announcements,
• hand-raise feature so teams could request help,
• anonymization to reduce bias in interactions, and
• moderation tools to remove disruptive players.

Some requests were de-scoped due to time constraints, but through clear prioritization, we kept the experience focused and functional.

Design

With limited resources, we worked fast and iteratively:
• I created multiple rounds of wireframes and interaction flows in Figma to define facilitator and player views,
• the PM and I collaborated to document requirements, while the developer built in parallel, and
• we reviewed designs directly with Microsoft stakeholders to ensure alignment at every step.

Our lean approach allowed us to move from definition to a working MVP in just four weeks, while the main game continued development in tandem.

Outcome

Conclusion

We successfully delivered an MVP Facilitator Dashboard that was tested in an alpha session with 30+ participants acting as both players and facilitators.

Key Results:
• Facilitators could easily monitor overall session progress and drill into individual team performance.
• Real-time communication tools made collaboration smoother and troubleshooting faster.
• The dashboard added structure and scalability, making Who Hacked? suitable for large classrooms, conferences, and professional development workshops.

This project reinforced the value of rapid prototyping and cross-functional collaboration. With Microsoft’s evolving vision, we had to stay nimble, balancing ambition with feasibility. Despite the new feature ask and a lean team, we delivered a solution that not only met Microsoft’s needs but also strengthened the long-term scalability of the Cloud Games initiative.

Get in Touch

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I'm currently available for consultation, freelance, and full-time work.

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