Breathing New Life Into a Legacy Automation Platform: Designing an Agentic Studio for the Next Decade
The Beginning — “A powerful platform trapped in its own age”
When I joined this project, I was stepping into a product that had been around for almost 10 years — a massive enterprise automation tool used across global teams to build workflows, automate internal processes, and create intelligent task sequences.
It was powerful.
But like many decade-old platforms, the UI struggled to keep up with its own capabilities.
Navigation felt heavy.
Important actions were buried.
The dashboard displayed data, but not decisions.
Teams depended on the product every day, yet the experience demanded effort rather than giving clarity.
My goal wasn’t just to redesign screens.
It was to redesign momentum — to give thousands of users a studio where building agentic workflows felt fluid, intuitive, and modern.
The Challenge & Goals
The core challenges
A legacy interface with outdated UX patterns
Complex user flows requiring multiple hops for simple actions
A dashboard overloaded with data but lacking hierarchy
No visual identity supporting today’s expectations for AI-centric tools
Users spending more time navigating than creating
Our mission
Turn a powerful but ageing enterprise platform into a high-clarity, high-efficiency agentic studio that teams could navigate effortlessly.
Success metrics (KPIs)
Reduce average time-to-complete for core tasks (workflow creation, configuration, publishing).
Increase weekly active usage for power users and functional teams.
Increase first-time success rate for new users.
Improve navigation success paths (fewer hops per action).
Enhanced user sentiment through internal surveys.
My Approach — “Untangling the complexity, one decision at a time”
1. Understanding the ecosystem
Before sketching anything, I spent time mapping how different personas used the platform:
Workflow creators
Analysts
Automation engineers
Ops managers
What I found was simple:
Everyone used the product differently, but everyone struggled with the same thing — finding what they need quickly.
So the first redesign decision was to rebuild navigation from the ground up.
2. Designing the new Agentic Studio
The Agentic Studio became the heart of the redesign.
My vision: a place where users can create, debug, and monitor flows without friction.
Key decisions:
Clean, modern layout with clear separation of build, test, and publish states
Smoother left-rail navigation with predictable groupings
Contextual actions that appear only when needed (reducing overwhelm)
A modular, extensible system so future AI tools can slot in seamlessly
The focus was not decoration — it was clarity, predictability, and creative flow.
3. Reimagining the dashboard
Dashboards shouldn’t preach data. They should guide decisions.
I reorganized the dashboard around three principles:
What do I need to know right now?
What needs my attention immediately?
What opportunities can I act on?
This led to a dashboard that:
Surfaces key KPIs at a glance
Highlights failing or delayed automations
Shows usage trends and performance metrics
Encourages quick navigation to build or fix actions
Users no longer scanned — they understood.
4. Smoothing the flows & reducing friction
Together with product and engineering, we simplified the steps needed for:
Creating new workflows
Editing complex flows
Adding AI/agentic components
Publishing and monitoring live automations
Every flow was redesigned with a goal: decrease cognitive load, increase creative speed.
The Outcome — “From maze to momentum”
Within months of introducing the new experience to internal users, we saw strong improvements:
30–40% reduction in time taken to complete common workflow-building tasks
Increase in weekly active users as teams found the studio easier to adopt
~50% drop in navigation errors due to clearer structure & context-aware UI
User surveys showed a significant uplift — words like “intuitive,” “modern,” and “finally easy” became recurring themes
Power users reported they could onboard new team members without extensive training
What once felt like a maze now felt like momentum.
The platform finally looked and behaved like the intelligence it offered.
Key Lessons & Takeaways
Complexity is not the enemy — unstructured complexity is.
A decade-old system doesn’t need a facelift; it needs re-architecture.
For enterprise tools, clarity is the biggest productivity multiplier.
The best interface is the one that helps users think less and create more.
This project reminded me that our job as senior designers is not to beautify products — it’s to liberate users.
Reflection — “If I were to push it further”
For the next evolution, I would incorporate:
Behaviour-driven UI that adapts to user patterns
An in-product “knowledge layer” that guides new users with micro-learning
Stronger visualization tools for workflow complexity
Fully live, real-time monitoring states baked into the studio
Closing — “From legacy to longevity”
Redesigning this enterprise platform wasn’t just a UI upgrade — it was an experience transformation.
We took a decade-old system and gave it a new decade of relevance.
Users now build faster.
Teams understand more.
The platform finally reflects the intelligence behind it.
And for me, this was the kind of project that reminds you why design matters — when you make complexity feel simple, you unlock impact at scale.
