How my team uses AI in their workflows
CONTEXT
AI is rapidly changing the way teams think, create, review, and scale digital experiences. At Nykaa, we are exploring AI not just as a productivity tool, but as an enabler of better design quality, faster execution, stronger consistency, and smarter internal workflows.
Within the design ecosystem, several AI-led initiatives are being built to improve internal efficiency and empower teams to move faster without compromising on craft, ethics, or brand experience. These initiatives are helping us reduce repetitive effort, standardise decision-making, and create scalable systems that can support multiple product areas in the future.
AI-POWERED VISUAL ASSET GENERATION SYSTEM
One of the key AI initiatives focuses on improving how visual assets and UI illustrations are created across teams. Traditionally, creating brand-aligned illustrations can take several days, especially when each asset needs to follow a specific visual style, composition, lighting system, colour palette, and level of detail.
To solve this, an AI-driven illustration pipeline was built that converts Nykaa’s visual style into a structured, codified, JSON-based system. This system defines every important aspect of our visual language, including geometry, lighting, materials, colour, shadows, composition, depth, and overall styling. Once the visual rules are codified, ChatGPT can be used to generate detailed illustration prompts and asset directions that remain aligned with our brand language.
This allows the team to generate consistent, high-quality UI illustrations within minutes instead of days. The system gives designers complete creative control while significantly reducing manual production effort. Instead of starting from scratch for every illustration, the team can now work with a scalable framework that ensures visual consistency across use cases.
The impact has been significant. Design production is now nearly 10 times faster, while visuals maintain complete style consistency with no major drift or execution errors. It also reduces dependency on a dedicated illustrator for every small or recurring requirement, making the process more cost-efficient and scalable.
The system is also future-ready. It has the potential to plug into design-system pipelines, Figma components, automated UI asset generation workflows, and even multi-brand visual systems. As our product ecosystem grows, this approach can help us create faster, more consistent, and more scalable visual experiences across Nykaa platforms.
IMPACT
20x faster illustration generation and consistent results
AI-POWERED UX WRITING ASSISTANT
UX writing plays a critical role in shaping how users understand, navigate, and interact with our products. From CTAs and error messages to empty states, nudges, banners, and onboarding flows, good UX content directly impacts clarity, confidence, and conversion.
At the same time, UX writing requirements often come in at high volume and with quick turnaround expectations. Designers frequently depend on UX writers for multiple iterations, which can slow down execution and limit the time writers have for more strategic work.
To address this, we are building an AI-powered UX Writing Assistant that enables designers to independently create fast, high-quality, on-brand UX content. The assistant can help generate, refine, and standardise product copy while staying aligned with Nykaa’s tone of voice and content principles.
This tool can support designers in creating first drafts for common UX writing needs such as button labels, helper text, error states, banners, tooltips, nudges, and microcopy. It can also help improve clarity, reduce ambiguity, and ensure that product language remains consistent across different flows and platforms.
The expected impact is meaningful. The assistant can free up nearly 30% of a UX writer’s bandwidth, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives such as content systems, user journeys, tone guidelines, experimentation, and high-impact product areas. It can also reduce turnaround time for design teams and improve language consistency across our products.
By empowering designers with AI-assisted writing support, we can create a faster and more collaborative content workflow where writers guide the system and designers use it responsibly within defined guardrails.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS BOT
We also created a Research Synthesis Bot to make user research insights more accessible, searchable, and actionable for stakeholders.
Research decks often contain rich insights, behavioural patterns, user quotes, pain points, motivations, and opportunity areas. However, these insights can sometimes remain locked inside long decks, making it difficult for teams to quickly find the exact information they need during product planning, design discussions, or decision-making.
To solve this, the team uploaded all relevant research decks into Gemini and created a personalised Gem trained on our existing research material. This Gem was then shared with key stakeholders so they could directly access synthesised research insights in one place.
Instead of going through multiple decks manually, stakeholders can now ask questions and instantly get consolidated answers across studies. They can explore user needs, recurring pain points, behavioural themes, category-specific insights, decision drivers, and opportunity areas without waiting for someone from the research or design team to manually pull information together.
This has made research more democratic and easier to consume across teams. Product managers, designers, business stakeholders, and leadership teams can quickly leverage past research while making decisions, ensuring that user insights are not lost after a project is completed.
The Research Synthesis Bot also improves efficiency by reducing repeated requests for the same insights. It allows teams to reuse existing research more effectively, identify patterns across studies, and build stronger context before starting new initiatives.
The impact is a faster and more informed decision-making process. Stakeholders can access synthesis and analysis in one go, research becomes more scalable, and teams are better equipped to build user-first experiences backed by existing evidence.
LOOKING AHEAD
These initiatives show how AI can be thoughtfully integrated into the design process to improve speed, quality, and consistency. Whether it is generating visual assets, reviewing ethical design patterns, or supporting UX writing, the goal is not to replace human creativity or judgment. Instead, AI is being used to reduce repetitive effort, create stronger systems, and help teams focus on more meaningful problem-solving.
At Nykaa, our approach to AI is rooted in practical impact. We are identifying areas where AI can remove friction, improve decision-making, and scale high-quality execution across teams. As these systems mature, they can become powerful internal capabilities that support faster product development, stronger design governance, and more consistent user experiences.
The future of AI in design is not just about automation. It is about building smarter workflows where people and technology work together to create better, faster, and more responsible digital experiences.