Journey Orchestrator: rebuilding the Program Builder
Program building was the heart of the product, and its biggest source of friction. I led the effort to reimagine it as an intuitive, AI-assisted workspace, owning research, stakeholder alignment, and design direction from discovery through launch.
Program building is complex, and the tool made it harder
Building a program isn't a single task. It combines logical structuring, technical detail, and cross-team collaboration. The existing builder was rigid, forcing users to adapt to the tool rather than the other way around.
Left unaddressed, that rigidity carried real organizational cost: programs failed silently, admins cloned and republished just to “test,” and teams stood up duplicate programs simply to handle different timezones.
An intuitive workspace that simplifies complexity
I framed a clear target: reimagine the Program Builder around the user's mental model, with drag-and-drop nodes, AI-powered inline source creation, versioning, testing, dynamic participant timezones, and reusable templates.
From research to launch, decisions were earned, not assumed
I designed a mixed-method research program, secondary research, working sessions, community feedback and testing, and used real-time insight to fine-tune the final experience.
Five pain points that made building hard
Secondary research surfaced the structural reasons program building broke down for real teams.
Complex logic structures
Users struggled to translate abstract goals into executable workflows without errors.
Rigid workflows
The builder lacked flexibility, making even small changes tedious.
Collaboration gaps
Teams working across time zones faced constant friction in communication and alignment.
Error-prone environment
Without strong validation, versioning or testing, mistakes were common and costly.
Steep learning curve
Non-technical users found the existing builder intimidating and inaccessible.
Collaborative ideation
I ran working sessions with mid-market and enterprise admins to ground every decision in their reality.
Turning admin voices into a vote-ranked roadmap
Rather than designing to opinion, I converted qualitative feedback into an evidence-backed priority model, each opportunity carried by admins' own words and a clear vote count.
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Post Publish Edit
9 VotesThe ability to make edits to a program even after it's been published.
- Modify Conditional Wait.
- Add / Remove steps in a program.
- Update an email template used in send email step.
- Modify tokens used in a program, add calculated fields.
Admin Voice“This will require more detail to avoid issues, such as ensuring visibility into which participants are affected and adding internal dependency checks. Overall, increased flexibility would be highly beneficial.”
“Currently we have to design all programs to fetch participants from the current program. This is the only way we can prevent rebuilding the query in the event a clone needs to happen.”
“Change the name of a program”
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Test Run
9 VotesTest run a program before publishing it
- Test an individual step (test send email, check a condition etc).
- Run program with test data without publishing it. Add test participants with data, run the program.
Admin Voice“This would be HUGE!!!”
“This would be a great help. At the moment to test sometimes I publish with a test contact, and if all is working well, I clone it and publish again”
“This would be huge. It would significantly reduce my anxiety when launching a program for the first time”
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Conditional Wait
7 VotesEnhanced conditional wait to honor weekends, user timezone
- Introduce OOB options to select non working days.
- Customer messages can be configured to be sent only on working days. Take individual participant timezone into consideration while applying the weekends.
Admin Voice“Today, it's challenging to manually determine the difference between the time of publishing a program and the time of communication for participants.”
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Edit Draft Program
5 VotesChange steps in program without deleting all subsequent steps
- While configuring a program (Draft state), ability to easily add a step anywhere and retain configuration when a step is to be re arranged within the program.
Admin Voice“This would help prevent errors as adding or rearranging steps without losing configurations, increases the risk of misconfigurations while building huge programs where multiple steps are involved.”
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Surveys
4 VotesEmbed surveys within email chain
- Introduce a generic editor that is model agnostic.
- Allow embedding surveys in a email step in any program.
Admin Voice“The reason this would be so important is because then I could use other features form the email step program that I can't get in a survey model program (eg, I can't use calculated fields in the conditional wait of a survey model program, to stop reminders from sending out if certain criteria is met)”
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Participant Timezone
4 VotesSchedule programs in user timezone, run multiple times a day
- Allow running a program multiple times in a day at specific pre configured hours. The program schedule is adjusted automatically based on the participant timezone. This would allow calculated fields, reports to use the latest data.
Admin Voice“Timezones would be huge. Currently we have to do multiple programs to handle timezones.”
“Participant timezone would be the most used of these ideas”
“Multiple times per day would be super useful”
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Notifications
3 VotesSuccess and Failure Notifications
- Just like all other features of the product that run jobs (eg, Rules Engine, Data Designer, Connectors...), JO should also have notification ability to notify admins of successful runs or failures of participant sources and/or programs.
Admin Voice“Current process is incredibly inefficient and frequently results in seasoned admins having missed a program silently failing or not running at all.”
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True Branching
1 VoteAbility to branch a program (beyond yes/no)
- Support for branching, allowing a conditional wait to have more than two outcomes. Each branch can follow its own path independently, without needing to return to the main flow in a single step.
Admin Voice“The reason this would be so important is because then I could use other features form the email step program that I can't get in a survey model program (eg, calculated fields in the conditional wait of a survey model program, to stop reminders from sending out if certain criteria is met).”
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Opt-out & Exclusion
1 VoteCentrally manage opt-outs and exclusion lists
- Allow managing exclusion lists centrally which can be attached to a program. Participant unsubscriptions apply by default to all.
Admin Voice“Visibility into opt-out and exclusions are pretty lacking. It would also be great to have an easier way to exclude participants from similar programs, e.g. if you cloned a program, the participants of the original don't count as prior participants in the new clone.”
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Support Complex Sources
1 VoteClone and template complex participant sources
- Query-builder efficiencies, the ability to clone a particular query builder and save it as a template that can be applied to other programs.
Admin Voice“I would love to see enhancements for query builder efficiencies. It takes significant time to build queries for participant sources, especially for more complex organizations.”
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Integrations
1 VoteIntegrations with other products
- Introduce a generic, model-agnostic editor and connect with external products.
Admin Voice“Do we have an integration with (or planned for) HubSpot? Managing CS emails separate from other corporate emails/templates is a burden that could probably be overcome through integration.”
From prioritized signal to validated design
A deliberate path from divergent ideation to convergent, tested decisions.
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Brainstorming & feature prioritization
Mapped the problem space and ranked opportunities by admin votes and business impact.
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User flow
Defined the lifecycle, draft, test, active, edit, version and discard, so the model matched how teams actually work.
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Exploration & iterations
Pressure-tested concepts against real workflows, iterating quickly on the riskiest interactions.
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Evolving audience setup
Reworked how participants are sourced and managed, reducing the need to rebuild queries.
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Streamlining outcomes
Consolidated analytics and management so admins could combine programs and see results in one place.
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Final designs based on user feedback
Carefully refined to meet what customers actually wanted, making the experience easier and more powerful.
Final designs built around what customers needed
Each capability targets a specific, vote-ranked pain, making program building easier and more powerful for administrators.
Reusable templates
Customizable templates for diverse use cases, quick setup without compromising personalization.
Drag & drop
Build and adjust programs on a drag-and-drop canvas, designed for all users and responsive across devices.
AI inline source creation
Create a participant source seamlessly with AI, without leaving the workspace or rebuilding queries.
Versioning
Save and track versions of a program, experiment with changes, and collaborate on active versions safely.
Real-time error handling
Detect and highlight issues as they happen, helping users identify and correct problems before launch.
Dynamic participant timezone
Automatically adjust communication timing to each participant's time zone for seamless global scheduling.
Revolutionized program building, and the numbers showed it
Templates, AI sourcing, drag-and-drop, versioning, testing and dynamic timezones came together into a single, measurable shift.
The release of dynamic programs at the end of 2023 was the primary driver behind a sharp acceleration in adoption, doubling monthly customer growth from 2% to 4% in 2024.
A clear line from the design strategy, dynamic, timezone-aware programs, to a business outcome leadership could see in the data.
What we shipped
- Templates that make overall program building simple and fast
- Advanced AI to create a source seamlessly without leaving the workspace
- Drag-and-drop nodes right on screen
- Versioning to track changes and experiment with configurations
- Testing that keeps programs robust and error-free
- Dynamic participant timezone for communications that send at the right local time
One workspace, one source of truth
After the improvements, admins could effortlessly combine programs and view all analytics in one place, instead of standing up multiple programs and stitching results together. The result was real time saved and a meaningful boost in efficiency.