Reimagining how Platform AI works—From the inside out

My role in the transformation

As Platform AI Lead at ServiceNow, I wasn't just delivering features — I was transforming how the team operated. I led a distributed team delivering contextual AI experiences across the platform, serving frontline workers in customer service, IT, and HR. My mission: unblock progress, improve collaboration, and build a healthy team culture—especially across the messy seams of horizontal product work.

I brought clarity to ambiguity and order to chaos, making core or embedded designers feel heard, supported, and valued.

"Jessica is an exceptional design leader and partner. She builds strong cross-functional relationships, aligns early on goals, and balances customer insight with pragmatic delivery. Working with her felt like running a polished machine—clear priorities, seamless execution, and real momentum. I miss having a counterpart who brought such clarity and accountability."

- Prerna Kholi, Director of Product Management

Before my intervention

Before I joined, I had the direct experience of consuming the team's output—and it was frustrating. The communication was one-way, disjointed, and transactional. Teams were being given dense information without context or collaboration, and while the Platform AI team cared deeply about partnership, they didn’t have a consistent or scalable way to invest in it. Too often, it felt like an afterthought simply because they were so busy. I knew this was something I could help change.

"Before Jessica came in, we were getting things done, but it felt pretty chaotic—like we were just figuring it out as we went. She brought the structure and clarity we needed. Jessica helped us slow down, get organized, and build better habits. Because of that, we had a solid foundation to grow from—and I've been able to keep building on it."

- Tami McBride, Senior Manager, Product Design - AI Experiences

Finding the friction

I began with listening. I sat down with each of the designers and heard about their work, problems, and what prevented them from successfully empowering partner teams. Trends appeared immediately:

No program manager meant constant urgency and a lack of prioritization.
Embedded designers felt like outsiders—excluded from decisions and disconnected from the core team.
Our meetings were not structured, and this caused confusion and disengagement.

These were not just process issues—they were cultural signals.

"When Jessica first joined, it was hard to get visibility or predictability from the team. By the time she left, everything was far more streamlined and transparent—even without program management support. She went above and beyond her role to make collaboration easier, and it gave me confidence that we could rely on her team to deliver without constant follow-up."

- Prerna Kholi, Director of Product Management

Charting the way forward

I took a servant leadership approach: no sweeping directives, just attentive scaffolding to facilitate the group to thrive.

Reclaiming time and clarity: I worked with trusted PMs to develop a lightweight capacity planning and sizing model. This gave us visibility into where our effort was going and enabled the team to say no with confidence. I also coached team members in timeline negotiation and realistic expectation setting.
Bridging inclusive collaboration: I resolved the gap between the platform and embedded designers by facilitating organized, honest discussions. We synchronized expectations, set shared goals, and instituted new meeting rituals with intentional agendas and defined outcomes. I mentored one team member who was unintentionally dismissive of others' input to develop her reflection, adaptability, empathy, and time management.

“I appreciate the clarity Jessica brought to the team. She clearly articulated what I was responsible for versus others. This gave me confidence to understand what my role was and what decisions I could make.”

— Kalyani Dhone, Staff Product Designer

Structure in building without bureaucracy: I assisted the team in designing and conducting more efficient meetings. We focused on quality rather than quantity, so every meeting had an owner, a purpose, and meaningful contributions.
AI at scale: I also helped ensure the team designed their AI solutions with intention and the ability to scale as the capabilities evolved.

Designing human-centered AI at scale

In addition to driving cultural and operational transformation, I provided design leadership to some of our most influential AI capabilities. I directed the design of these tools to be effective, intuitive, and adaptable to real-world applications.

Now Assist Context Menu: This MVP feature allowed agents to summarize, create, and edit written text using generative AI. I guided the designer to think beyond near-term usefulness—making the interaction model extensible as we introduced additional features like inline actions, more fine-grained recommendations, and context-sensitive editing.
Summarization skill: Implemented throughout the platform, this skill allowed agents to instantly grasp the context of support cases —summarizing customer intent and previous assistance. My design leadership concentrated on clarity, speed, and user confidence.
AI skills & predictive intelligence: I was charged with familiarizing myself with the broader ecosystem of AI skills—where they were being used, where they had constraints, and how they could be improved. I drew on my previous experiences designing solutions that enhance the agent experience to ensure our platform solutions were relevant and valuable. It kept the team from designing in isolation and helped them concentrate on cohesive, scalable UX patterns across surfaces.

My goal across our efforts was to match our AI capabilities with human-centered design — ensuring the experience felt intuitive, assistive, and trustworthy.

What changed

The transformation was real:

Healthier work management: Healthier work management: Designers reported their work was more focused and manageable.
Increased cross-team efficiency: Embedded designers became involved again and were actual contributors.
Thoughtful enablement: We started creating enablement content with our partners rather than for them, leading to more relevant tools that addressed actual needs.
More intuitive AI tools: With better-defined roles, improved cross-team alignment, and tighter design governance, we shipped scalable AI features that supported agents in real-time.

"Jessica recognized my strengths and utilized those strengths well, which led me to feel more motivated."

— Kalyani Dhone, Staff Product Designer

The group felt more empowered, connected, and confident—indications of a culture in which servant leadership is planted and nurtured.

Sustainable design leadership venn diagram

Impact

The transformation in how we operated as a team was immediately noticeable internally and externally.

Aligned stakeholders and empowered contributors

External teams gained clarity on how to engage with us, while embedded designers rejoined efforts with renewed ownership and motivation.

Delivered scalable, human-centered AI tools

We shipped features like the Summarization Skill and Now Assist Context Menu with intuitive UX and strategic foresight, setting a foundation for platform-wide adoption.

Built a sustainable team model

With clear priorities, better capacity planning, and role clarity, the team shifted from reactive execution to confident, focused delivery.

"I trusted Jessica completely with the part of the team she led. She doesn't wait to be told what to do—she spots problems, brings solutions, and takes the work further than expected. When I flagged team communication as a challenge, she tackled it head-on and helped the team grow stronger. She made my job easier and left the team better than she found it."

— Tami McBride, Senior Manager, Product Design - AI Experiences

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Reimagining how platform AI works—From the inside out