Express Extensibility
With Express competing with Canva, we needed extensible approaches to bring 3rd party apps to Express through “add-ons” and we also needed to make Express embeddable in other company’s products including our own. Over 180 add-ons were built in a year. The embed SDK brought Express functionality to Acrobat, ChatGPT, Slack, Box, Wix, Hubspot, to name a few.
Problem
How to enable 3rd party technology in Express and integrate Express into other products.
Solution
Design an add-on platform and launch an Express SDK to embed in 1st and 3rd party apps.
What I Brought
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I led the design strategy for Adobe Express extensibility, ensuring that third-party add-ons and SDK integrations expanded the platform’s creative potential while maintaining a seamless and intuitive user experience. By prioritizing contextual discoverability and frictionless adoption, I helped drive 415% MAU growth through add-ons.
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I partnered with engineering, product, and business teams to define and deliver an embeddable Express SDK, enabling integrations across Acrobat, Slack, HubSpot, and more. This initiative not only scaled Express’s reach but also drove 1.5M new users in a single quarter through Express-Acrobat integration.
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By designing an engaging marketplace for third-party add-ons and fostering a developer-friendly plugin ecosystem, I enabled a tenfold increase in third-party plugins within a year. This effort positioned Express as a powerful, extensible platform that seamlessly integrates into diverse creative workflows.
Editing an image
in Acrobat
This video shows the Edit Image SDK in action inside Acrobat allowing a user to easily remove background, apply effects, make adjustments before saving the image back to the presentation.
Gen AI to generate images in Acrobat
Using the Generate Image SDK, an Acrobat user can use the power of AI to create images for documents. In this video you see how we can use a contextual menu to open the SDK and write a prompt to generate image more suitable images for this presentation.
415%
growth in MAU using add-ons
from design of intuitive, contextual add-on discovery and creation of engaging add-on marketplace
1M
new users in one quarter
with Express-Acrobat integration design efforts, with projections to double user growth by 2025
Outcomes
Spearheaded design of Adobe Express add-on platform to increase creative capabilities across first- and third-party platforms and achieving 415% growth in MAU using add-ons.
Achieved eight percent MAU growth within one quarter by leading Adobe Express SDK integration in Acrobat.
Drove tenfold increase in third-party plugins within a year and fostered innovation for Express users by delivering Express plugin platform design.
Headed Express-Acrobat integration design efforts, adding 1.5M new users in one quarter with projections to double user growth by 2025.
