Adobe Express Platform
Adobe Express needed to scale beyond a standalone tool into an enterprise-ready, embeddable platform. I led design for the Express Extensibility team, shaping embedded editors, SDK integrations, and a governed plugin marketplace. The platform drove 114% MAU growth and doubled Express engagement across enterprise and partner ecosystems.
Problem
How to evolve Adobe Express from a standalone tool into an extensible platform to be embedded across enterprise and partner products.
Solution
Design an extensibility platform with embedded editors, an SDK, and a developer-facing add-on marketplace for 1P and 3P products.
My Role
Led SDK design and embedded flows. Prototyped Acrobat and Microsoft integrations that drove buy-in and delivered 2.9M users.
Extensibility + Integrations
Championed unified design systems and component reuse to scale SDKs consistently across Acrobat, web, and third-party apps.
Platform Thinking
Designed GenAI features: text-to-image, template generation, and Assistant. Integrated third-party models while maintaining user trust.
AI Feature Design
How I Led This
As Express scaled, the dominant strategy was to grow adoption by moving Acrobat users into the standalone Express app. I initially supported that direction, but research revealed consistent friction—users didn’t want to leave their document workflows.
I formed a different view: growth would come from meeting users where they already worked. This wasn’t an easy shift. Both Acrobat and Express leaders had valid concerns about ownership, roadmap alignment, and long-term positioning.
Rather than debate the strategy abstractly, I built and demonstrated embedded prototypes that showed how Express tools could feel native inside Acrobat. By grounding the conversation in user behavior and working design, I earned cross-team trust and aligned leadership around an integration-first model.
That shift transformed Express from a destination product into a platform—one embedded across Adobe’s ecosystem rather than competing with it.
"Growth would come from meeting users where they already worked."
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.
Developer Experience
I led the developer experience that lets teams build, test, and ship Adobe Express add-ons directly inside the Express editor, with low-code tools for rapid experimentation and a native code playground for advanced workflows. By collapsing development, preview, and publishing into a single, cohesive flow, it dramatically reduces friction while ensuring every add-on feels native, trustworthy, and ready for real creators.
2X
Doubling Express users through strategic platform integrations
415%
growth in MAU using add-ons
from design of intuitive, contextual add-on discovery and creation of engaging add-on marketplace
8M
users of through integrations
with 114% growth of Express MAU coming from Acrobat integration and enterprise integrations of Express.
“Lance was my product org's Design leader for Extensibility. Lance was especially instrumental in building bridges with the Acrobat team by showing rather than telling how we might embed Adobe Express.”
Aubrey Cattell — VP, Adobe Extensibility
Outcomes
114% MAU growth driven by embedding Express as a reusable platform capability across Adobe and third-party enterprise products.
Led Express–Acrobat integration design, adding 3M new users by integrating creative workflows directly into existing enterprise productivity flows.
Enabled a 10× increase in third-party plugins within one year by delivering a governed plugin platform that scaled partner innovation without fragmenting the core product.
