Overview

Designed an end-to-end AI automation system eliminating manual research monitoring — delivering publish-ready social copy, AI insights, and brand-consistent Canva assets directly to the marketing team via Slack

Problem

At Harvard D³, faculty and researchers regularly publish high-impact work — but the marketing team had no automated way to know when new research went live. Every post started from scratch: someone had to manually find the paper, read it, extract key insights, write platform-specific copy, brief a designer, and create assets — all before anything could be published.

The result was inconsistent coverage, missed publications, and a team spending 3–5 hours per week on a process that should have taken minutes. High-impact research was regularly going unnoticed on social channels simply because the pipeline was broken.

My Approach

I mapped the existing workflow end to end, every step, every handoff, every point of friction. What I found was that the problem wasn't effort or skill, it was architecture. The team was talented but working inside a broken system with no automation, no standardization, and no visibility.

My approach was to design the system first and build it second. I defined the ideal workflow from research detection to published post, identified which steps could be automated, which required human judgment, and where AI could genuinely add value — rather than just adding complexity.

System Architecture

The system I designed connects six stages each one feeding directly into the next, with human review built in at exactly the right moment. The marketing team stays in control of creative decisions while the system handles everything that doesn't require human judgment.

The Interfaces

Each screen was designed around a specific job-to-be-done — from instant awareness to deep review to pipeline oversight. Together they form a complete system that requires zero new behavior from the team.

Entry Point

The moment Make.com detects a new publication, the D3 Dongle bot fires a structured alert into the #Research_Corner channel. The notification surfaces the professor name, paper title, key insight, three social copy links, and a direct Canva template link — all in one message. The team can approve, edit, or skip without leaving Slack.

Design decision: Slack is where the marketing team already lives. Making it the primary entry point meant zero onboarding, zero friction, and immediate adoption from day one.

Impact

From 3–5 hours to under 30 minutes

~80% Reduction in time from research publication to publish - ready content brief

100% Of publications now detected automatically - zero manual monitoring

3x More research publications covered consistently across social channels

0 New tools the marketing team had to learn - entire workflow delivered via Slack

Beyond the time savings, the system fundamentally changed how the team operates. Coverage became consistent and proactive rather than reactive and inconsistent. The team shifted from spending time on low-value mechanical tasks to focusing on creative refinement, strategic decisions, and audience engagement — the work that actually requires human judgment.

Reflection

The most important design work on this project happened before I opened Figma. Mapping the existing workflow, identifying the right automation touchpoints, and deciding where human judgment should be preserved — those decisions determined whether the system would actually work in practice.

I also learned that the best automation is invisible to the people using it. The marketing team didn't need to understand Make.com or AI APIs — they needed a Slack message that made their job easier. Designing for that simplicity required more complexity under the hood, not less.

What worked well

Keeping Slack as the single entry point dramatically reduced adoption friction. The team started using the system immediately because it required zero behavior change.