Hi, I'm Nishtha.

I lead design and research at Workato, where I'm building the platform that gives a flock of unpredictable AI agents their rules and shape.

Platform strategy

Shaping an integrated AI platform strategy

Used research and prototypes to win support for an integrated platform over a standalone product, then guided its launch and what came next.

Product incubation

Translating the MCP standard into a product

I understood the emerging MCP standard, translated it into a product model, and guided its implementation from prototype through release.

Design org leadership

Scaling a design org from seed-stage to a $5.7B company

Built Design and Research from one to 22 over ten years. Created shared practices and design leaders to keep the quality bar high.

Design direction

Supervising AI agents without leaving your work

Led a product-wide model for monitoring and steering parallel AI agents without interrupting people’s current work.

Hands-on design

Designing workflow primitives that scaled into a platform

Designed composable workflow primitives that let customers build almost anything and later supported copilots, agent skills, and MCP.

Co-inventor

Patenting a turn-taking cue for streaming AI

I co-invented a patented conversational cue that shows when streaming AI is still responding and when the user can take the next turn.

Some tinkering. A few musings.

Trust in human-robot interaction

5 levels of AI maturity in design

Design your own bird swarm

Nishtha presenting on stage at a Workato conference

I've been leading Product Design and Research at Workato for the last 10 years.

With two master's and a bachelor's degree, my formal training spans physical product design, visual communication, psychology, and human factors.

Before Workato, I co-founded MyNewsStudio. We built a good product, but the business model was not viable. We also tried to do too much at once. The experience showed me that design alone cannot create success. Product strategy, revenue model, sales, distribution, and marketing all have to work together. Focus is a business decision. We eventually wound down the company, so knowing when to walk away was my hardest lesson.

Before software, I designed tabletop accessories for Episode, an Indian design brand. Sixteen years later, elements of that work are still sold and used to market the collection. I've also created art installations, designed luxury retail spaces, and worked as a design merchandiser.

I'm looking to build with companies, in software or hardware, where the hard part is making powerful systems people can trust.

LinkedIn comment from Vijay Tella, Co-founder and CEO of Workato: “Nishtha Mehrotra, I'm incredibly grateful. We're so lucky to have you leading the intuitive product experience we're known for. I've spent 30 years in integration middleware, and this tech is complex and whack under the hood. Refactoring six complex platform categories into one while making it seamless for both pro-code integration experts and business teams? No joke. What you and your team have built is one of the great feats of enterprise software design. So much so, you have created a marketing challenge as Workato confounds people. How can something that looks so easy be so powerful? What blows me away is your first-principles thinking and relentless drive to keep attacking the complexity. We don't have real competition for our product experience, productivity, and speed; our biggest challenger is ourselves. You and your team are awesome role models of our core value to keep raising our game. Thank you.”

From Vijay Tella, Workato’s CEO

Credentials

M.S. in Human Factors and Ergonomics

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering San José State University

M.Design

Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India

B.Design

National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar, India

Patenting a turn-taking cue for streaming AI

TL;DR

  1. Context

    In 2023, Copilot streamed short bullets, long instructions, and full-width code into the same response. The bubble changed width as new content appeared, making the interface jitter. Pauses also looked like the response had finished, even when more content was coming.

  2. Objective

    Keep streaming responses visually stable and make it clear when Copilot was still working, and when the user could respond.

  3. Action

    Co-invented an animated treatment with no fixed right edge while content streamed. When the response finished, its border and background resolved around the message, signaling that it was the user’s turn.

  4. Outcome

    The interaction shipped in Workato Copilot’s recipe and connector builders and received U.S. design patent D1,108,461 S.

Streaming has no turn-taking cues

We launched Workato Copilot in 2023. It generated structured responses inside our recipe and connector builders, often combining instructions, outlines, and blocks of code.

These responses arrived as a stream, so the chat bubble kept changing shape as the model produced more text. The interface felt unstable and jittery. When generation paused, the bubble also appeared complete, even when more content was still coming.

In human conversation, tone, pauses, and body language tell us whether someone has finished speaking. We wanted to bring those same cues into the chat interface.

The interaction needed to satisfy three conditions:

  • Make it clear that the response is still forming.
  • Make completion noticeable without demanding attention.
  • Make the transition feel conversational, not like system status.

The proposal

While a response is streaming, its left edge is defined while its right edge fades into the background. The bubble looks unfinished because it is unfinished.

When generation ends, the border resolves around the complete message. After a brief pause, color fills the bubble and the input becomes active again. Together, these cues signal that the model has finished speaking and it is the user's turn to respond.

Turn-taking explained

Three-phase sequence: the bubble streaming with a fading right edge, the border resolving as the response completes, and the input activating for the user's turn
Before
Hi! As your copilot, I'm here to help you build your connector. To start, please provide the application's API documentation URL. This helps me build the connector code better and faster.
https://stripe.com/docs/api/usage_records/create
Let's first add a connection! This allows the connector access to the API to test actions and triggers.
Add a connection
What authentication do you want this connection to use?
Private access token
Ask a question about your code
After
Hi! As your copilot, I'm here to help you build your connector. To start, please provide the application's API documentation URL. This helps me build the connector code better and faster.
https://stripe.com/docs/api/usage_records/create
Let's first add a connection! This allows the connector access to the API to test actions and triggers.
Add a connection
What authentication do you want this connection to use?
Private access token
Analyzing…

Both conversations pause for the same amount of time. In the conventional bubble, the pause looks like completion. The open edge holds the turn until Copilot has actually finished speaking.

Why this detail mattered

It was a small change, but it improved the rhythm of the interaction. People could tell whether Copilot was still working without reading a status label or interpreting an indefinite spinner.

The pattern shipped in Workato Copilot's recipe and connector builders.

The underlying system was filed as a U.S. utility application (2025/0047627 A1), and the transition itself was granted as a U.S. design patent: Display Screen or Portion Thereof with a Transitional Graphical User Interface (US D1,108,461 S).

First page of U.S. Design Patent D1,108,461 S for a transitional graphical user interface, naming Nikhil Venkatesh and Nishtha Mehrotra as inventors.

The resulting transition was granted U.S. Design Patent D1,108,461 S, naming Nikhil Venkatesh and me as inventors.