Reimagining How Google Marketing Works
An AI-powered platform that unified fragmented marketing workflows into intelligent orchestration.
Led the vision and experience design of an AI-powered platform that unified fragmented marketing workflows and helped teams move from manual coordination to intelligent orchestration.
My contributions
- Led design end to end for Mandala, owning the interaction model, north-star vision, and cross-surface consistency.
- Balanced long-term platform bets with the team's near-term roadmap so we shipped forward without losing the horizon.
- Partnered with product, engineering, and research leaders across 6+ orgs to align on one orchestrated ecosystem.
- Ran design jams and prototyping sprints that gave partner teams a shared language and unblocked hard decisions.
- Presented to SVP-level leadership and turned two prototypes into a funded, staffed, multi-year program.
- Role
- Senior Interaction Designer
- Client
- Year
- 2021-2025
- Discipline
- AI, Enterprise
- Vision
- Workflow design
- AI orchestration
- Cross-platform spec
The problem
Google Marketing lived across hundreds of tools, dashboards, and spreadsheets. Planners spent more time coordinating than deciding. Every new product added another seam, and every campaign meant re-stitching context by hand. The real opportunity wasn't another marketing app, it was rethinking how marketing work itself moves through the org.
The insight
Most proposals on the table tried to optimize individual tools. I argued for the opposite. Stop optimizing the parts and start orchestrating the whole. That single reframe is what made Mandala possible, and what made leadership pay attention. AI wouldn't replace the marketer, it would carry the thread between tools so people could stay in the strategic work instead of the plumbing.
Explorations and iterations
Before converging on Mandala, I led a body of exploratory work: heuristic evaluations of the tools teams used every day, archetype activities to ground the work in real roles, FigJam design jams across the org, and sketch-level explorations of what an AI-native workspace could feel like. Each artifact became a vehicle for discussion, helping product, engineering, and leadership see what was possible.
Mandala, up close
Mandala is less a single product and more a connected set of surfaces. Each one shares the same orchestration model, so a decision in planning ripples into briefs, approvals, audiences, concepts, and assets, without losing context along the way.
Beyond Mandala: AI across the marketing org
Mandala was the north-star, but it sat inside a broader body of work. I designed AI capabilities across Google's marketing ecosystem, from audience building to creative workflows to measurement. Each capability followed the same orchestration model: intelligence inside the work, grounded in the team's real material, so adopting one made the next feel familiar.
Theme · 01
Orchestration & planning
Marketing Garage: the connected workspace where briefs, plans, and approvals move together.
Theme · 02
Audiences & insights
Intelligence for understanding who you're talking to, and how the work is landing in market.
Theme · 03
Creative & activation
AI that helps marketers move from idea to asset without leaving the work.
Theme · 04
Vision & north star
The longer-horizon concept work that set direction for where the ecosystem could go next.
Missteps that shaped what shipped
Mandala didn't arrive fully formed. Week one: we pitched full automation. Feed it a brief, get a finished plan back. The room went quiet. Nobody trusted a black box making decisions for them. By week four we scrapped the autopilot framing and rebuilt around a copilot model where every AI move is explainable, editable, and ignorable. We tried a unified inbox for cross-tool notifications. It tested as noise, not signal, and we cut it. Mid-project we realized the org didn't want another login. Reframing Mandala as orchestration, making the existing tools behave like one system, unlocked SVP support that had been stuck for months. Later versions added a brief quality score, richer visual guidance, and an agent experience with fewer clicks and clearer insights. The throughline: when AI hides its work, marketers stop using it. When it shows its work, they trust it with bigger decisions.
Human-AI creativity principles
Beyond Mandala, the project produced a set of Human-AI creativity principles that other teams in the org continue to build against. The guiding philosophy: foster a collaborative partnership between marketers and GenAI, so AI amplifies expertise rather than replacing it. For AI to truly empower marketers, it must be a trusted partner, not a black box.
Prototypes that moved the org
The vision earned SVP support the moment leaders could watch the work behave. Two high-fidelity Mandala prototypes, and the broader ecosystem work behind them, turned an abstract argument into something you could point at. Campaign speed climbed 60%, satisfaction moved from 34% to 89%, and leadership greenlit a dedicated team and multi-year budget to deliver the roadmap. More lasting than any single screen: a shared language, orchestration, not optimization, that reframed how the org thinks about marketing tooling.
What I learned
AI has to disappear into workflows
The moment intelligence demands its own tab, it becomes another tool to manage. When it lives inside the brief, the plan, or the approval, it becomes a teammate. The real challenge in enterprise design is rarely a single screen. It's the invisible wiring between systems, incentives, and habits.
Prototypes move organizations, not decks
The vision earned SVP support the moment leaders could watch the work behave. High-fidelity prototypes turned an abstract argument into something you could point at, and leadership stopped debating the concept and started debating the details.
A shared language is the real deliverable
Orchestration, not optimization, gave eight teams the same frame. That frame outlasted any single screen and reshaped how the org thinks about tooling. The most durable design work isn't a single feature, it's a shared way of seeing the system that other teams can build from.
The most impactful prototypes help orgs imagine, not just validate
Design artifacts earn their keep when they help organizations see possibilities that previously felt impossible. That's when a prototype stops being a spec and becomes a north star the whole company can move toward.