ABK Assist

Transforming Platform AI Collaboration
and Productivity

Reimagining how Platform AI works from the inside out, enabling
a cross-functional team to collaborate, communicate, and
succeed throughout the Activision/Blizzard ABK Assist AI platform.

Summary & Key Components

Overview:

Activision/Blizzard ABK Assist is an internal product built to deliver contextual AI experiences across the platform, serving front-line workers in customer service, IT, and HR

The product was not being utilized in any meaningful or product way because of mixed messaging, structure of work process and non-collaboration from dependent teams, plus information and requests were dense and chaotic

The platform team was overworked, burned out and barely addressing flaming hot immediate issues

Objectives

Unblock the development and integration of AI tools in the ABK Assist platform
Improve collaboration for scaled implementation interdivisionally
Build a healthy team culture—especially across the messy seams of horizontal product work

Obstacles

Communication was siloed and transactional and directives were given in dense information without context

No program manager meant constant urgency and a lack of prioritization. Couple that with embedded designers that were excluded from decisions and disconnected from the core team.

This lead to lack of structured process caused confusion and disengagement.

Solutions

I led the ABK Assist AI Design team to:

Implement structure, clarity to define process
Shift from isolated delivery to inclusive, cross-functional and cross divisional collaboration that improved clarity, team culture, and partner engagement
Rebuild trust with internal and external design teams through clear engagement practices, task and goal setting

Re-engaged embedded designers and scaled inclusive meeting rituals which boosted moral and set a rhythm to the pace of each sprint.

I also championed smarter project planning through a team-led capacity tracking, transforming platform AI implementation. This helped to redistribute the work-flow and deadlines more equitably with staggered teams.

I built and implemented:

I took a servant leadership approach: No sweeping directives, just attentive scaffolding to
facilitate the group to thrive. I also developed a lightweight capacity planning and sizing model
to determine and manage future resource needs by matching projected demand with the team's capacity.

Developed and launched the ABK Assist Context Menu
Launched the ABK Assist Summarization Skill
Intelligence to improve the agent experience Developed ABK Assist AI Skills and Predictive
and service to our customers

Designing AI to Scale - The Changes

ABK Assist Contextual Menu

Designed to scale with evolving customer needs.
This MVP feature allowed customer service agents to summarize, create, and edit written text using generative AI.
I guided the designer to think beyond near-term usefulness—making the interaction model extensible as we introduced additional features like:
- Inline actions
- More fine-grained recommendations
- Context-sensitive editing

ABK Assist Skills and Predictive Intelligence

Patterns designed with purpose.
This MVP feature allowed customer service agents to summarize, create, and edit written text using generative AI.
I guided the designer to think beyond near-term usefulness—making the interaction model
expandable as we introduced additional
features like:
- Inline actions
- More fine-grained recommendations
- Context-sensitive editing

ABK Assist Contextual Menu

Fast clarity for complex cases.
Implemented throughout the platform, this skill allowed customer service agents to instantly grasp the context of support cases - summarizing customer intent and previous assistance.
My design leadership concentrated on clarity, speed, and user confidence.

Outcomes and Impact

ABK Assist Contextual Menu

The Transformation Was Real

Healthier work management:
- With structure, intention and process flow - Designers reported their work was more focused and manageable.
Increased cross-team efficiency:
- Embedded designers became involved again and were actual contributors.
Thoughtful enablement:
- We started creating enablement content WITH our
  partners rather than FOR them, leading to more relevant tools that addressed actual needs.
More intuitive AI tools:
- With better-defined roles, improved cross-team
  alignment, and tighter design governance, we shipped scalable AI features that supported customer service agents in real-time.

The teams felt more empowered, connected, and confident - indications of a culture in which servant leadership is working and nurtured.

Operating as a Team

How we operated as a team was immediately noticeable internally and externally.