Envisioning the Ideal Experience

To set a strong foundation for the future of Loopio, the design team ran a collaborative workshop to explore what our ideal platform could look and feel like in an AI-powered world.

• We began by reimagining the platform from the ground up—not constrained by existing systems or features, but guided by user needs and new opportunities for focus and automation.

• The team explored a wide range of visual directions—from illustration styles and photography to typography, layout, and use of color.

• Through discussion and iteration, we landed on a central metaphor: an airport lounge. In the same way a lounge offers calm and clarity amid the chaos of travel, we wanted Loopio to feel like a quiet, grounded space in the high-pressure world of proposal work.

This metaphor helped us define our aesthetic direction:

• Neutral, calming color palettes that allow users to focus, with bold colors reserved for highlighting key actions or AI-generated content.

• A mix of serif and sans-serif typefaces, blending clarity with a sense of editorial sophistication—bringing warmth and authority to an otherwise utilitarian space.

• Minimal, clean layouts that reduce cognitive load and make complex tasks feel simpler.

• A visual tone that reflects professionalism, focus, and trust, aligning with the high-stakes nature of our users' work.

This vision guided the next phase of AI integration—ensuring that the interface could support complex intelligence while feeling clear, calm, and human-centered.

Identifying Opportunities for Agentic AI

With our future-facing vision in place, the next step was to deeply assess Loopio’s current workflows and user pain points—and explore how agentic AI could meaningfully enhance or reimagine them.

• We examined the end-to-end proposal process, identifying where users were spending the most time and encountering friction.

• At the same time, internal conversations around agentic AI were accelerating. This new paradigm—where AI doesn’t just assist, but actively takes on tasks within clear boundaries—fit naturally with Loopio’s collaborative, multi-step workflows.

Proposal creation often involves multiple roles and responsibilities:

• Someone importing and structuring RFPs,

• Others finding the right content,

• Team members conducting competitive research,

• And still others editing and refining the final output.

This led us to a system of AI “companions”—specialized agents that mirror these human roles and assist users in specific tasks:

• The Importer – prepares and structures incoming documents

• The Librarian – finds, recommends, and manages relevant content

• The Editor – polishes and adapts content for clarity and tone

• The Researcher – surfaces supporting data or insights

• The Investigator – digs into source material or answers nuanced questions

To focus our efforts, we narrowed in on the Importer and Librarian. These two roles map directly to Loopio’s most critical and pain-prone workflows—where automation and intelligence could drive the greatest impact for users.

Bringing the Vision to Life: From Concept to Full Platform Reimagination

With the agentic AI model and visual direction in place, I began translating our ideas into tangible design concepts—starting with a reimagined “Writer’s Desk” layout.

• The goal was to create a focused, intelligent workspace—a calm space where users could do deep, high-value work with AI as a supportive partner in the background.

• I designed an initial layout that anchored the user in a central workspace, surrounded by helpful AI assistants (like the Librarian or Importer) that could surface content, answer questions, or take action with minimal friction.

• We shared this vision across the design and product org, and it immediately sparked internal excitement—especially around the clarity, calm, and future-readiness of the experience.

Building on that momentum, I began experimenting with how this visual and interaction model could extend into Loopio’s core workflows:

• Importing Documents: Transformed from a clunky, manual process into a one-click import flow powered by the Importer AI companion. Users now receive real-time insights during upload—like formatting issues or missing sections—making the process faster, cleaner, and more informed.

• Building and Enriching Your Library: The Librarian surfaces trusted answers and proactively suggests tools like Build Your Library, Update Entry, and Review Responses—turning live project work into high-quality, reusable content with minimal user effort.

• Analyzing New Bids: Introduced a smart Bid Analyzer experience, powered by the Investigator, that provides a quick summary of the opportunity—win themes, key milestones, client history, and an estimated win rate—to support confident, data-backed go/no-go decisions.

Around this time, Product senior leadership asked if we could share this new direction at the upcoming board meeting. In response, I rapidly evolved the early concepts into high-fidelity, end-to-end flows over the course of a week—showcasing how agentic AI and thoughtful UX could reshape the platform for the next era of proposal work