- Problem
- A Sr. Director's vision for EVA, a persistent AI assistant, had to become an executive-ready prototype for PayPal's Leadership Summit, with the CEO Staff Update eighteen days away.
- Solution
- A polished prototype and promotional video covering ten use cases, built on established LLM chat patterns in PayPal's brand language, with EVA living in a docked panel scoped to HR, IT and company policy.
- Impact
- Shipped on time for the CEO Staff Summit, greenlit by leadership for a Beta build, and recognized with two Prodigy Awards.
- Role
- UI/UX Designer
- Timeline
- 18 days, January 2025
Context
An 18-day sprint from concept to executive demo
In January 2025, my Sr. Director asked me to turn his vision for a persistent AI assistant, EVA, into a working prototype for PayPal's Leadership Summit. The CEO Staff Update was eighteen days away.
This wasn't a typical design project. There were no user pain points to solve, no time for interviews, no competitive analysis. The job was to bring a visionary concept to life in something polished enough to win executive buy-in and concrete enough to hand to engineering.
Process
Borrowing what works, designing what's missing
With the timeline this compressed, every hour of original design was an hour not spent shipping. I took inspiration from established LLM chat patterns (ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot) and grafted PayPal's brand language onto them. The goal: feel production-ready, not concept-rough.
Ten use cases, four from the brief and six self-initiated
Leadership provided four use cases. I added six more to demonstrate how EVA would actually live across an employee's day, from administrative work to leadership decisions:
- Order accessories
- Recap meetings
- Summarize feedback documents
- Chat summary
- Summarize enterprise URLs
- Summarize Excel documents
- Draft executive email
- Review pending approvals
- Manager: new hire experience
- HR: review hire candidates
The talent acquisition flow became the centerpiece of the promo video. It showed EVA collapsing a multi-day hiring decision into a single conversation.
The Product
A persistent assistant that meets employees inside their work
EVA lives in a docked panel summoned from a persistent icon (not a destination app), scoped to PayPal's internal systems: HR, IT, and company policy. Three of the ten flows, as designed:
Click any screen to enlarge.
Prototype
Interactive Figma walkthrough
All ten use cases connected in a single Figma prototype, with the conversational interface, content surfacing, and PayPal-system integration shown end-to-end.
What leadership said
"You accepted the challenge, managed the pressure effectively, and delivered high-quality outcomes. Hats off to you."Organization Leader EVA Project Sponsor
"Your commitment, creativity, and collaboration clearly demonstrated how we Win Together."Chief Technology Officer PayPal