Redesigning Marketing Automation – HiveSpark AI 2.0
Marketing managers at high-tech startups struggled with fragmented workflows and inefficient manual processes when managing recurring campaigns. HiveSpark AI 1.0 no longer met evolving user needs, so I designed HiveSpark AI 2.0 with automation templates, centralized tracking, and smarter task management. This improved process efficiency by 50% with reduced manual effort.
My Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Jun - Oct 2024
Team
1 Product Manager 1 Product Designer 2 Software Engineers 2 Marketers
$10B Market Grow Opportunity
Marketing process automation software market is expected to grow from $8B in 2025 to $18B by 2030
Efficiency for Marketing Teams
40-50% reduction in process setup; 10+ hours saved per week for a 4-member team
Scalable AI Process Management
HiveSpark 2.0 sets the foundation for future platform modules with long-term scalability.
Hirebeat is an AI-driven SaaS startup revolutionizing business efficiency with HiveSpark AI Copilot. HiveSpark AI 1.0 successfully automated content creation with ChatGPT API integration, helping over 500 users streamline marketing tasks with pre-built automation prompts.
HiveSpark AI 1.0 Redesign: Evolving beyond content creation to process management
However, users feedbacks demonstrated that marketing managers required convenient campaign process management, and smarter task tracking across multiple platforms.
“Features to manage the campaign process could be the icing on the cake!“
Laura Sato, Marketing Specialist
Hurien Jessi, Senior Marketer
“Adding multi-channel integrations could widen its appeal even more!”
Alexander, Marketing Manager
“It takes the lots of efforts to streamlines the whole campaign process.”
Asher Bell, Marketing Manager
“Workflow automation Tools like N8N and Zapier are too complex to use.”
Previous Workflow & User Challenges
Marketing managers struggle with fragmented workflows and inefficient processes when managing recurring activities.
Here is a previous process management workflow, highlighting the challenges marketing managers faced:
Step 1: Process Setup
Build automation workflows using N8N, integrating Airtable and HiveSpark AI.
Manually setting up workflows for each platform is repetitive, and current tools like N8N are also complex and inefficient to use.
Picture title: N8N workflow + Logo
Step 2: Content Creation & Publishing
Users design platform strategies and defines content schedules in Aritable; Generate and publish post with HiveSpark AI.
Switching between multiple tools is time-consuming, and auto-published AI content lack proper review steps, making quality control challenging.
Step 3: Process Tracking & Optimization
Users monitors AI execution, tracks process, post-performance, and refines strategies using Airtable, and N8N.
Tracking multiple processes and AI activities in real time is difficult, making workflow optimization challenging.
How Might We optimize marketing process management through workflow automation and enhanced AI-human collaboration?
To address this challenge and define core product features, I facilitated several stakeholder UX workshops to with stakeholders, product managers, engineers, and marketers to uncover insights, align on priorities, and structure the solution effectively.
to prepare the workshop, I did user interview, desktop research, competitive analysis, current product heuristic analysis, xxxx, then; how did I designed the workshop? add pics
We started with a Lightning Decision Jam, where each participant listed pain points and voted on the most critical issues. Through this, we defined three actionable insights:
actionable design insights to bridge between pain points to user flow
Transparency: Enable user control and clear tracking of AI workflows.
Simplicity: Provide an intuitive and user-friendly platform.
Next, we used user flow mapping and whiteboard wireframing to define the platform structure of HiveSpark AI 2.0, and we aligned on two core flows:
1) Auto-workflow Creation → where users can quickly initiate new processes or launch campaigns with pre-built automation templates.
2) Process Management → helps users manage and track both AI-driven and manual tasks efficiently.
Design Principles
Efficiency: Automate repetitive tasks for faster, seamless process management.
Transparency: Enable user control and clear tracking of AI workflows.
Simplicity: Provide an intuitive and user-friendly platform.
Design Part 1: Process Creation
How to simplify marketing process setup with automation templates, allowing users to manage multiple processes simultaneously?
For the Process Creation with automation workflow templates, I explored two different versions.
Highlight 1: A global create feature positioned at the top
This design made navigation simpler and allows users to create new processes quickly from any page. It streamlines workflows and speeds up the setup process. But it may prioritize content creation over process management.
during user testing, hard to start // stakeholders. why this button??
Highlight 2: Creation Center is integrated with dashboard, accessible via a pivot switch
The second version integrates the creation feature directly into the marketing dashboard, where users can switch seamlessly from dashboard to the Creation Center on the main page.
In terms of the two versions, I discussed with the product manager and aligned with key stakeholders, and we decided to take the second version for usability testing with three pilot users. Our users highlighted a few key needs:
“ It would be helpful to balance high-level overviews with task-level details.”
“ It’s better to distinguish task management from process management.”
“ I need insights on what needs improvement and how to optimize workflows.”
I then iterated on the final version, and Key improvements include: 1) A more intuitive entry point for process creation, ensuring users can easily locate and initiate new processes. 2) Categorized templates by workflow types or marketing channels for clearer navigation and better organization.
Design Part 2: Process Tracking & Task Management
How to optimize process tracking, improve AI execution visibility, and prioritize urgent tasks for better efficiency and collaboration?
Users monitor process progress to ensure tasks are completed on time and efficiently. and I explored three design solutions for the process tracking:
Ideation 1: Progress Bar with Process Due Date This helps users stay on schedule but lacked task-level details and wasn’t ideal for ongoing processes
Ideation 2: Progress Within Repeat Cycles Best suited for recurring workflows but less effective for one-time processes and added unnecessary complexity.
Ideation 3: Task Completion Rate & Repeating Period Improved accountability but was overwhelming for managing many tasks and lacked an overall process timeline
Final Design Based on usability testing with 3 pilot users, I refined the final design to: Simplify periodic progress tracking with clear task completion rates, and balance high-level overviews with task-level details.
Within process tracking, Task Management plays a key role in helping users organize, execute, and monitor tasks efficiently. I explored three versions of task management.
Ideation 1: Individual process tasks with detailed steps Focused on detailed step-by-step guidance for individual processes but inefficient to track multiple workflows.
Ideation 2: Process group tasks with clear steps Introduced a grouped workflow view for spotting bottlenecks but lacked clarity on individual task statuses.
Ideation 3: Individual process tasks with clear status Prioritized task statuses for urgent action but didn’t offer an overview of multiple workflows.
After discussion with our team, I then took the version 2 and 3 for usability testing
“ It would be helpful to balance high-level overviews with task-level details.”
“ It’s better to distinguish task management from process management.”
“ I need insights on what needs improvement and how to optimize workflows.”
Final Design: Chart & Status Views: Clear Prioritization & Seamless Tracking I refined the design by merging Version 2 and 3, integrating Chart and Status views to help marketers track progress, prioritize urgent tasks, and enhance AI-human collaboration efficiently.
Usability Testing & Future Plan
Key Learnings
I learned that transforming fragmented, manual processes into an intuitive system requires deep user research and continuous iteration.
This project taught me that transparency and control are crucial in AI automation. To build trust, users must be able to review and refine AI-driven tasks instead of relying on a "black box" system.
I realized that the intelligent marketing future lies in seamless AI-human collaboration, where automation doesn’t just complete tasks but enhances strategic decision-making.