Case Study · Publicis Sapient · Bodhi

Redesigning AICS: making AI campaign creation simple and clear

An end-to-end UX and UI redesign of AI Campaign Studio restructuring how marketers move from a brief to AI-generated concepts and assets, rebuilt on the Helix Design System. A reimagined end-to-end journey that makes AI campaign creation easier to learn, use and adopt.

AICS Campaign Foundation screen — set up a campaign with brief selection, context sources and platform targeting
Role
Product Designer
Scope
UX, UI, information architecture, Helix Design System
Product
Bodhi AICS — Enterprise AI campaign platform
Year
May 2026 – July 2026

AICS takes a marketing brief and turns it into audience-targeted concepts, images and video for each channel. I owned the redesign of the whole application structure, workflows and interface and brought it onto Helix.

Situation

The AI worked. The product around it was hard to follow.

AICS helps marketers turn a campaign brief into AI-generated concepts, images and videos. The AI did its job well, but the product had been built one screen at a time and it showed.

Too many steps.

Creating a campaign took five stages, and the first stage had its own smaller stepper inside it.

Key information was hidden.

The brief was split across six collapsed sections, so the details that shaped every later step were out of sight.

Choices were hard to compare.

Audience options appeared as long paragraphs instead of side-by-side options.

Screens didn't match.

Each screen used its own layouts and components instead of a shared design system.

Every new AI feature added another screen and made the product harder to use. Before adding more, AICS needed a clear structure.

Task

Own the redesign, end to end

Redesign

the full AICS experience, UX and UI

Rebuild

the information architecture

Simplify

complex AI campaign workflows

Systematise

the UI so it stays consistent at scale

Action

What I led

  1. 01

    Audit

    Mapped every existing screen — workspaces, projects, the five-stage campaign flow and admin ThinkTanks — to expose duplication, dead ends and inconsistent patterns.

  2. 02

    Information architecture

    Collapsed five stages into four: Campaign Foundation, Analytics & Concept, Assets Generation, Review & Assets Score.

  3. 03

    Workflows

    Rebuilt campaign setup, audience selection and concept selection around the decisions users actually make at each step.

  4. 04

    Wireframes to hi-fi

    Took the new structure from low-fidelity flows to production-ready screens, states and edge cases.

  5. 05

    Helix alignment

    Rebuilt screens from Helix section headers, fields, rich checkbox groups, cards, badges, menus and drawers — tightening hierarchy, navigation and interaction patterns.

  6. 06

    Delivery

    Worked with product and engineering through implementation, resolving component and behaviour questions as the build progressed.

Heuristic Evaluation · Old UI

Where the old experience broke down

Before redesigning, I reviewed every screen of the old campaign flow against Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. These six issues shaped the redesign.

H1 · System status High

Two progress bars, one journey

Brief Ingestion ran a three-step stepper inside the five-stage stepper, so users tracked two positions at once.

Redesign: one persistent vertical rail.

H6 · Recognition over recall High

The brief was out of sight

Audience, KPIs, guidelines and taglines sat in six collapsed accordions, so users had to recall the brief rather than see it.

Redesign: extracted brief one click away in a drawer.

H8 · Minimalist design Medium

Choices buried in paragraphs

Audiences were a block of text, and each concept expanded its full image and video prompts, making options slow to scan and compare.

Redesign: audience cards; concepts with collapsible prompts.

H3 · User control Medium

Side tasks pulled users out

Managing validation rules meant leaving for a full page, then stacking a modal on top to add a rule.

Redesign: rules in a drawer over the flow.

H5 · Error prevention High

Problems found too late

Review showed a lone image and a Validate button; pass and fail results only appeared on the final export summary.

Redesign: validation breakdown at review, rule by rule.

H9 · Recovery Medium

Dead ends with no next step

When the library had no match, the screen said so and stopped, and Save as Draft only appeared at the very end.

Redesign: optional references up front; draft saving on every stage.

Severity reflects my assessment of impact on completing a campaign.

Information Architecture · Old vs New

Five stages, two steppers and separate pages became one four-stage flow

Before 5 stages · nested stepper

  1. 1 · Brief Ingestion Second stepper inside: Basic Info → Uploads & Selection → Configuration
  2. 2 · Info Analytics Brief in six accordions · target audience as text · Manage Rules on a separate page
  3. 3 · Concept Generation Concept options · edit in a modal
  4. 4 · Asset Generation AI generation strip · From Library strip · version history
  5. 5 · Review & Summary Validate → Export Summary on a separate page

After 4 stages · one vertical rail

  1. 1 · Campaign Foundation One page: name · brief & version · ThinkTank context sources · platforms · configuration
  2. 2 · Analytics & Concept Audience cards · AI suggestion · concept options with edit and version history · extracted brief, validation rules and reference images in drawers
  3. 3 · Assets Generation Selectable image grid · preview, edit, regenerate, generate video · generation control
  4. 4 · Review & Assets Score Validation breakdown · PSD layer preview (new) · Summary & Publish inside the flow

5 → 4

Stages, by merging analytics and concept

2 → 1

Steppers, replaced by one persistent rail

Pages → Drawers

Rules, brief and validation open in context

In the flow

Summary & publish no longer a separate destination

Old vs New

Same engine. A different product.

Campaign setup

Old AICS brief ingestion screen with nested steppers
Before — a stepper inside a stepper, with brief, uploads and configuration split across sub-steps.
New AICS Campaign Foundation screen
After — one Campaign Foundation page: brief and version, ThinkTank context, platforms and configuration.

Audience selection

Old AICS info analytics screen
Before — the brief buried in accordions; the audience offered as a paragraph.
New AICS Analytics and Concept screen with audience cards
After — comparable audience cards, each with its own action, plus an AI suggestion as a fallback.

Validation rules

Old manage validation rules page with add custom rule modal
Before — rules managed on a separate full page, with a modal stacked on top to add one.
New manage validation rules drawer
After — a side drawer over the flow: rule counts up top, extracted and custom rules in tabs, parameters under each toggle.

Concept selection

Old AICS concept generation loading screen
Before — a standalone generation stage, separate from the audience it depends on.
New AICS concept options screen
After — concept options side by side, with editable image and video prompts, regenerate and version history.

Reference images

Old asset generation screen with an empty library section
Before — library matches appeared only after generation, often as an empty state.
New reference images drawer
After — curated references offered before generation to steer visual style, clearly marked as optional.

Assets generation

Old generate assets screen with loading tiles
Before — AI and library results in two stacked strips, with no way to act on an individual image.
New assets generation grid
After — a selectable grid where each image carries its own expand, edit and generate-video actions.

Review & assets score

Old review screen with a single image and validate button
Before — a lone image and a Validate button; results only surfaced later in the summary.
New validation breakdown drawer
After — a validation breakdown at review time: passed and failed counts, each rule with its validator and reason.

PSD layer preview New in redesign

New PSD layer preview drawer
A capability added in the new UI: inspect the generated PSD's image and text layers, toggle visibility, and download a fully editable file for hand-off to Photoshop.

Summary & publish

Old review screen with a single image and validate button
Before — three loose columns of assets, reports and brief, outside the campaign flow.
New assets summary and publish screen
After — one final review inside the flow: campaign details, overall score, assets reviewed, and publish actions up top.

Key Design Decisions

Five calls that shaped the new AICS

01

One flow, one stepper

Nested horizontal steppers became a persistent vertical rail, so users always see where they are — with Save as Draft anchored beside it.

02

Merge stages that share a decision

Audience analysis and concept generation became one stage, keeping the chosen audience visible while its concepts are reviewed.

03

Choices as cards, not paragraphs

Audience segments show population count and share side by side, each with a direct Generate Concepts action.

04

AI suggests, the user decides

AI output is visually distinct and always editable — a suggested audience when none fits, prompts that can be edited, regenerated or rolled back.

05

Keep the brief one click away

The extracted brief and validation rules moved from a crowded side panel into a slim header that opens a drawer on demand.

System

Helix underneath everything

Every decision above ships as Helix components, so new AI capabilities inherit the same patterns by default.

Result

One coherent product, built to grow

AICS now reads as a single, guided experience instead of a sequence of disconnected screens. Navigation and information structure are clearer, complex AI steps are simpler to move through, and the entire UI sits on a consistent Helix foundation giving the team a scalable direction for every capability that comes next.

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