I am a Staff UX Designer at YouTube Creator, leading prototyping and Gen AI exploration.
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I lead prototyping at YouTube Creator, helping cross-functional teams test ideas with creators before committing engineering time.
Dive inA few projects I led across YouTube Studio and Google Drive.
I led the pivot and end-to-end design of YouTube Studio Inspiration. An AI-powered creative partner for exploring, developing, and shaping promising video ideas.
Explore
I led the design and launch of YouTube Studio Trends, bringing channel-specific search and viewing signals into the Creator’s workflow across web and mobile.
Explore
As Interaction Designer for Google Drive, I led the UX for the Notification Center.
Explore
I led the design of file approvals, a critical feature for unblocking team collaboration in Google Drive.
Read the Google article
I lead prototyping at YouTube Creator, helping cross-functional teams test ideas with creators before committing engineering time.
Validating a feature took months. Exploring an idea meant backend pipelines and engineering time, so good ideas waited in line and teams had few ways to test them before committing.
A starter kit of YouTube Studio UI shells, design tokens and prompt templates: Gen AI UI “legos.” Teams snap ready-made components together instead of starting from a blank screen, and get something real in front of creators within hours.
Discovery sprints that take a team from a hunch to creator feedback in days, without waiting on heavy backend work.
It starts with a hunch worth testing, before anyone writes a line of backend code.
Modular, Gen AI-ready pieces. Teams snap together ready-made components instead of building from scratch.
Something real, ready to put in front of creators, without waiting on engineering.
Creators react to the prototype, so teams learn what lands before they build it. That feedback shapes what gets built next.
Tools only help if people adopt them, so I scaled prototyping across YouTube Creator and 6 core product areas.
A modular template ecosystem, so no prototype starts from a blank screen.
A discovery-sprint guide that matches each hypothesis to the right tool, so teams test their riskiest assumption first.
Hands-on bootcamps and workshops trained 100+ designers and PMs, and self-serve guides reached hundreds more.
I led the design and launch of YouTube Studio Trends, bringing channel-specific search and viewing signals into the Creator’s workflow across web and mobile.
Creators were forced to rely on fragmented, third-party analytics tools to understand what viewers wanted. Every trip out of YouTube Studio interrupted their creative flow and added friction right when they were deciding what to make next.
I redesigned and launched an embedded, native analytics suite, leading a user-centered design approach and setting up a rapid iteration framework with our cross-functional partners.
Viewer demand lives where creators already work, replacing a patchwork of outside tools with one native experience.
Feedback loops with our first trusted testers, and a rapid iteration framework with partners across the team, guided the product through multiple milestones.
Complex technical backend signals became digestible, actionable dashboards that creators can act on right away.
From a broad topic to a clear content gap, in a few taps.
The suite scaled to millions of monthly active users, helping creators de-risk their content investments by checking demand before they hit record.
As Interaction Designer for Google Drive, I led the UX for the Notification Center.
Granting file access on the mobile app was a significant friction point. Most people struggled to complete the task smoothly while on the go, and that bottleneck slowed down team collaboration and productivity.
As Interaction Designer, I spearheaded the redesign of the Notifications Center. I worked closely with research, product and engineering to identify critical gaps and prioritize the right UX investments.
The goal was to streamline the collaboration pipeline, so people can stay updated and act on a file right from their phones.
Worked closely with research, product and engineering to identify the critical gaps in the experience.
Prioritized the right UX investments to streamline the collaboration pipeline.
A centralized hub where people can stay updated and act directly on a file from the notification itself.
See what changed and act on it, right from the notification.
“Something like this is incredibly helpful—a single, unified view. I don’t have to sort through endless emails or fragmented communication channels. Being able to tap right into the file directly from my notifications is a game-changer.”
Research participant
We delivered a centralized hub that lets people stay updated and take action right from their phones. It turned a frustrating, multi-step process into an intuitive one.
I led the pivot and end-to-end design of YouTube Studio Inspiration. An AI-powered creative partner for exploring, developing, and shaping promising video ideas.
As UX Design Lead, I drove the strategic vision and roadmap for this Gen AI experience. I fostered a highly collaborative environment, working with visual design, interaction design, content design, and research to deeply understand and iterate with creators. This agile approach allowed us to move swiftly from initial concept to production in a rapid three-month cycle, laying critical foundations for a scalable product.
As YouTube creators rapidly adopted GenAI tools in early 2024, we pivoted from the research-focused 'Trends' tab to develop the 'Inspiration' tab, a generative tool designed to support creators' evolving needs.
A unique take on a potential video.
The visual and verbal promise viewers choose.
The key sections that make the video worth watching.
Providing AI-driven inspiration, tailored to each creator's channel, directly addressing a critical pain point in the video creation process.
Providing a comprehensive 'Video Concept' view to visualize and validate video concepts, including audience interest and key content elements, enabling informed decision-making.
Dedicated spaces for in-depth exploration of thumbnails and titles, allowing creators to experiment and refine their idea until it feels right!
Dedicated spaces for in-depth exploration of thumbnails and titles, allowing creators to experiment and refine their idea until it feels right!
This Gen AI experience empowers millions of creators to unlock their full creative potential by facilitating brainstorming. It marked a pivotal shift in how YouTube supports creators' evolving needs.
“The YouTube Inspiration Tab can be one of the craziest hack ever…these outlines are so deep… it's crazy that YouTube will just give you popular topic in your niche and outline keywords to use interest charts”
Creator
Brainstorm new video ideas, get title and thumbnail suggestions, and more, right inside YouTube Studio.
Watch on YouTubeI don’t always travel, and when I do, I usually forget to write about it. Here is the one time I actually did.
We rented a van and explored Lofoten. Here are a few snaps of some of our favorite moments from this lovely trip.
We arrived in Tromsø, picked up our van from Arctic Campers, loaded up on supplies at Eurospar, and immediately started the drive down to Lofoten. Look at my face in this photo. I look like I just got a puppy.
We drove down to Reine, which was packed with cars, but we managed to score a great parking spot. From there, we caught a ferry to Kjerkfjord and found the absolute best camping spot in the world. I had the best sleep of my life—turns out, real ocean waves are way better than the ones on the BetterSleep app.
At camp we met a Chilean PhD student who has lived in Italy, Switzerland and now Norway, speaks five languages and once wrote a scout jamboree song in four of them. Nothing like a campsite for hearing someone’s whole story.
We walked back to the ferry, then did a short hike to set up our next camp. Around 7 PM, we started hiking up the ridge. It was incredibly steep but so much fun. We sat there watching a sunset that lasted until past 11 PM. The colors were so beautiful it was hard to finally pull ourselves away. We eventually hiked back down in full daylight. That ridge was so special, I actually cried a little.
We took a chill ferry back to Reine and had lunch at Restaurant Gammelbua. The place had so much personality it felt like stepping into a movie. Later that night, we balanced it out with a humble dinner back in the campervan.
Restaurant Gammelbua on Google Maps
We woke up super early to catch the ferry from Moskenes to Værøy. We drove straight to Håen, hiked up to the ridge, and then spent the afternoon driving around the other side of the island. It was so gorgeous it honestly gave me Greece vibes! Joe ate the world’s strangest-looking waffles on the ferry. He swore they were good, but hey, van food humbles you haha.
The weather was terrible, so we spent the whole day driving to Senja. The best part about having a van is the strategy: drive when it rains, pull over when it’s sunny, and hike until everything hurts. We parked for the night by the sea at the Hesten trailhead—in a painfully expensive parking lot.
We woke up at 4 AM to beat the crowds and started the Hesten hike. The weather was perfect, and the climb was surprisingly easy. We reached the peak with only one other couple up there taking pictures. We walked along the ridgeline, snacking on wild blueberries, and didn’t see another soul until our hike down.
Later, we drove to the southern part of Senja and found Senja Roasters, an amazing coffee shop run by expats. We chatted with the Spanish barista and drank some incredible house-made kombucha. We ended the day making burgers by a tunnel overlooking the ocean, then drove down to the beach to wait for the sunset.
Saturday started with terrible weather. We drove to a nearby cafe run by a super friendly Russian-Ukrainian woman. The coffee and pastries weren’t great, but she was wonderful. We spent the rest of the day driving around and ended up at a beach at the end of a fjord, making noodles and rice in the van and accepting that the weather had ruined our plans for a final sunset hike.
We eventually drove back to Tromsø, caught the ferry, and even saw a caribou. Back in civilization, we ate hotdogs, pastries, and some really good pizza. It was an incredible eight days, and then we finally went home!
Eight days from Tromsø to Senja. Tap a photo to see that stop, or zoom in to see where each one was taken.
Life is hard, so I made it harder by moving to a new country and trying to learn German. I stay sane by spending every free minute outside.
I built this game to bring one of my favorite trails in the Dolomites, the Sella Ronda, to life. Drop in and ride with me.
Now back to work, Lilly.
Discovering new products is supposed to be fun. I’m obsessed with the “build to learn” mindset because it forces you to stay curious and open.
In a world where AI is moving faster than ever, the products that win aren’t the ones that ship the most features. They are the ones built with the most empathy.
The future belongs to those who are curious enough to reshape how things are done. Ultimately, what separates us from bots isn’t just intelligence, it’s agency. It’s our messy desire to push new ideas into the world and try something completely new.
I love the messy process of building, learning directly from users, and watching early assumptions evolve into product gems. Doing this alongside brilliant people at Google has sharpened my product thinking. At the end of the day, exposure to the user is everything.
I’ve cracked the code: the best way to stay humble is to actively suck at multiple sports as an adult. Watching a six-year-old fly past me on a trail is the ultimate reminder that learning is the answer.
