2025  ✦  Product Design

The goal of this project was to integrate emails into Embra’s memory system, allowing users to sync their Gmail accounts, view and interact with emails within the context of Embra's memory system, and enhance their chat experience.

By bringing email into Embra’s memory, users could gain a unified view of their conversations with clients, track interactions with companies and people, and leverage Embra’s AI capabilities to quickly retrieve and act on their emails.

The context

Prior to Feb 2025, Embra was positioned as a meeting assistant for founders doing founder led sales. We wanted to start positioning Embra as a AI-operating system to coincide with the public launch.

To confidently position ourselves as an AI-first operating system, we expanded to include email integration, providing users with a more comprehensive business communication solution.

Founding Product Designer/Solo Designer

Client: Embra

Project Type: Product Design

Role: Founding Product Designer

Duration: 4 weeks

The problem

Sales professionals often have key information spread across meetings, emails, and Slack. Without ingesting emails, we were missing a crucial component of communication essential for effective deal tracking.

When testing the positioning of AI Operating System, we received user feedback that indicated that users expected Embra to ingest their email communication in addition to meetings.

Embra's product offering at the time

While Embra was already strong in managing meetings, it lacked ingestion of other business communication channels. Embra would record your zoom/google meet meetings and extract records of the companies and people you met with as well as key highlights of the meeting. You could then chat with that information, conduct workflows/run agents on that information, etc. within Embra.

Integrating emails into memory was a strategic step toward offering a more comprehensive business tool, making Embra indispensable for users handling scattered communication across multiple platforms.

User goals

Users expressed a need for better email management within Embra, as their communications were often fragmented across Slack, email, and meetings.

Initial approach

We initially explored treating emails as a distinct memory object, similar to Companies, People, and Meetings. This aligned with existing mental models within Embra. What this entailed:

• Each memory type has a data table and associated detail pages.
• Each email and email thread would have a page dedicated to it's detailed view. 
• Similar to other memory detail pages, the email pages would include navigation to related People and Company pages.

With this initial approach, because all other memory objects included a data table, I started by designing how emails would appear in Embra in the form of a email data table. There were small things I refined like the arrangement of the columns and I  was mainly concerned with how to display the email title, message, thread count, and recipients all in the same view. 

Scope adjustments

As the project evolved, we realized that what we had originally scoped was infeasible to implement by the deadline of our launch. Rather than pushing our launch date, we identified opportunities to reduce eng lift in the project. We realized that the email data table was unnecessary to solve the user goals that we had initially outlined. We instead decided to focus on allowing users to preview emails on People and Company pages. 

Removing the email data table:

• Instead of a dedicated section, emails were integrated into Company and People pages.
• This shift allowed users to access emails in their relevant context without an additional navigation layer.

Maintaining Core Functionality:

• Users still needed the ability to chat with an email thread and execute agents.
• The chat remained accessible within email detail views that were navigable from Company and People pages.

Outcome

The final design enables seamless email integration without unnecessary complexity, aligning with how users naturally interact with memory objects in Embra. By prioritizing contextual access over rigid data structures, we reduced development time while maintaining key functionalities.

1. Previews of email threads on People and Company pages

I focused on designing previews of email threads that users could view on People and Company pages. These previews allowed users to quick view all emails that were sent and received by this person or people of this company.

2. Ability to view the email thread

I then explored how users could view the full email thread while still having access to chat and agent functionality. I landed on a full page modal experience which allows the user to focus on the email while still having access to chatting with the email and running agents.

3. Tracking communications across people and companies

What we heard from users was that it would be incredibly valuable for them to be able to see what people and companies have emailed most recently. The next step would be to build a nudging system in which Embra could remind users to draft follow-up emails to companies that they haven't been in contact with in x amount of time.