Anja* Lukovic

Nest01

Home02

Meet03

BMW04

neo05

Ugli06

Anja* leads UX for Automations & Intelligence on Google Home, orchestrating AI-powered voice and mobile experiences that simplify home convenience. Her foundation in industrial design uniquely shapes her approach, emphasizing systems thinking, material empathy, and the user's physical environment. This perspective drives the seamless interactions she crafts across her work at Google, Magic Leap, and BMW.

01

Nest

My work focused on refining the iconing Google Nest Thermostat’s celebrated visual design and enhancing the user experience. Simultaneously, I drove a premium spatial interaction feature that secured three patents, setting a new standard for intuitive control and reinforcing Nest's position as a beloved device.

 

Role: Hardware UX Designer

2021-2023

Thermostat Work Highlights

1 “Farsight” Spatial Interaction

2 Redesigned, Dynamic Controller

3 Idle, Heating, and Cooling States

4 Aligned Digital & Physical

Image of primary brand logo

1 “Farsight” Spatial Interaction

I creared a dynamic system of fully customizable interfaces. Leveraging proximity detection, the device intelligently adapts, displaying glanceable information from afar and seamlessly revealing more detail as you approach. This ensures you always see the right information, at the right level of detail, transforming the thermostat into a truly intuitive and responsive home interface.

Image of primary brand logo

2 Redesigned, Dynamic Controller

 

I designed a novel Controller view that seamlessly blends functionality with the Nest Thermostat's iconic minimal aesthetic. This innovative interface dynamically expands when actively engaged, providing comprehensive controls, and then gracefully collapses to a sleek, minimal state when not in use. This ensures the hardware's premium design remains uncompromised, allowing its elegance to shine while delivering a rich interactive experience precisely when needed.

Image of primary brand logo

3 Idle, Cooling, and Heating States

 

I worked on designing the Controller's visuals for its Idle, Cooling, and Heating states, ensuring they carried the legacy of previous Nest Thermostat generations. The primary challenge was striking the right balance between the familiar and the new, all while respecting the hardware's premium aesthetic. My solution involved a gradient approach that gracefully hides the screen's border, creating a seamless and expansive visual experience.

4 Aligned Digital and Physical

 

My work extended to aligning the new on-device Controller with its in-app counterpart. The goal was to deliver a premium first-party experience, ensuring seamless visual and functional continuation from hardware to software. This required designing the in-app controller to precisely match the established Google Home app's design system, creating a unified and cohesive user journey.

02

Home

I lead UX for the Google Home Automations & Intelligence program, designing AI-powered mobile and voice solutions that orchestrate connected devices. My team’s work transforms daily routines into moments of effortless convenience. In 2025, I’m on a mission to make automations more approachable, delightful, and powerful.

 

Role: Lead Senior UX Designer

2023-Present

Home Work Highlights

1 Home Automations & Intelligence Program Ladership

2 New Automation Foundation

3 First AI Feature for the Home

4 “Help me create” in Home App

...more work landing soon

Image of primary brand logo

1 Automations & Intelligence Program Lead

Leading the UX for Home Automations, I oversee the work across each touchpoint, including the in-app tab, web, AI creation tools, automation capabilities, and hardware journeys.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

2 New Automation Foundation

 

My work involved the redesign of the Automation Visual Editor, making manual setup more intuitive and powerful. This brought new capabilities and a refreshed look, offering greater flexibility. A core enhancement was the new conditions section, providing advanced device state and presence triggers for finer smart home control.

3 First AI Feature for the Home

 

My focus for "Help me script" was to make hihgly complex automations accessible within the Google Home script editor. I drove the design of this AI tool, enabling users to describe automations naturally. The YAML code gets instantly generated, empowering even non-technical users to create advanced automations.

Image of primary brand logo

4 “Help me create” in Home App

 

To significantly simplify automation creation, I led the integration of generative AI into the Google Home app. "Help me create” enables users to describe desired automations in plain language and create them witin seconds. I dove into the technical aspects of defining our custom LLM's training protocol, ensuring Gemini models seamlessly set up automations and offered relevant suggestions for a more intuitive user experience.

03

Meet

Starting in February 2020, I had the privilege of leading multiple projects for Google Meet. Faced with urgent global needs, I drove the effort to make Meet free, ensuring worldwide connectivity during the pandemic. My role also included delivering highly requested features like tiled layouts and crucial safety tools, directly enhancing user experience when human connection mattered most.

 

Role: UX Designer

2020-2021

Meet Work Highlights

1 Free Meet for Everyone

2 Core Feature Meet Redesign

3 Meeting Safety & Security

4 Picture in Picture

5 Slides in Meet Integration

1 Free Meet for Everyone

My most impactful work at Google Meet involved leading the UX to make the platform free for everyone during the pandemic. This rapid, cross-functional undertaking transformed Meet from an enterprise tool into an intuitive solution, profoundly connecting millions globally when it mattered most.

2 Core Feature Redesign

 

As Google Meet rapidly scaled for consumer use during the pandemic, I led the design of Tiled Layouts. Historically an enterprise product, Meet lacked a direct need for individual participant views. My work helped introduce this newly essential feature, allowing people to see each other face-to-face and maintain vital personal connections.

Image of primary brand logo

3 Meeting Safety and Security

 

The Redo logo is a sleek, modern arrow that curves backward, symbolizing the power to rewind, correct, and optimize financial decisions. The reversed motion represents our core mission—helping businesses go back, fix errors, and recover lost value.

Image of primary brand logo

4 Slides in Meet Integration

 

The Redo logo is a sleek, modern arrow that curves backward, symbolizing the power to rewind, correct, and optimize financial decisions. The reversed motion represents our core mission—helping businesses go back, fix errors, and recover lost value.

Image of primary brand logo

5 Picture in Picture

 

The Redo logo is a sleek, modern arrow that curves backward, symbolizing the power to rewind, correct, and optimize financial decisions. The reversed motion represents our core mission—helping businesses go back, fix errors, and recover lost value.

04

BMW

At the BMW Tech Office, a hub for R&D innovation, I directly influenced and shaped numerous confidential VR, AI, ML, and IoT in-car projects. My role involved translating these cutting-edge technical advancements into tangible user experiences.

 

Role: Industrial & UX Intern

2017-2016

BMW Work Highlights

1 XR Passenger Experience

Other confidential work

1 XR Passenger Experience

During this project, I conducted initial user experience research and conceptualization for an innovative passenger experience. My work involved immersing myself in VR, mapping in-car VR user journeys, and sketching in VR. I leveraged my industrial design background to shape physical interactions within the virtual realm, exploring critical UX opportunities in in-car immersion, situational awareness, and fluid virtual-to-physical transitions. This project later evolved into a collaboration between Meta and BMW.

Challenges of in-car XR

 

Designing for in-car VR posed unique UX challenges. We focused on mitigating motion sickness, balancing virtual immersion with situational awareness of the physical car. Crucially, creating seamless transitions between virtual and real worlds was essential to prevent user disorientation.

05

neo

Before platrom-wide digital wellbeing efforts, I reimagined what a smartphone can be. Instead of devices built for the "attention economy"—constantly pulling us in—neo shifts the focus to supporting time well spent. This project challenges how our current phones, designed for endless engagement, often interrupt our most valuable moments. neo uses existing technology to create a smarter mobile device, one that understands us and prioritizes what matters, helping us stay present in the moment.

 

Personal project

2018

"precise, trustworthy, approachable, reliable"
Image of primary brand logo

Get started

 

neo's onboarding helps you set intentions: you'll get a brief overview, set your daily screen time goal, and select your top three values. These values are pivotal, dynamically guiding how neo organizes information and adjusts its behavior based on your context, ensuring it supports what matters most to you.

Image of primary brand logo

Dynamic, Contextual Home Screen

 

neo's home screen intelligently adapts to your context. It prioritizes what matters, bringing apps relevant to your current values to the surface—like work apps when you're at the office—while visually "sinking" distractions to help you stay focused.

Image of primary brand logo

Keep Track of Time Spent

 

neo fosters healthier digital habits by providing a quick overview of your phone usage against daily goals. It quantifies screen time into years of life lived, offering a unique perspective on your digital presence and encouraging mindful engagement.

Image of primary brand logo

Mapping the Digital Footprint

 

neo provides a way to understand your digital habits by quantifying scrolling as a physical distance, measured in feet. To make this tangible, it then offers real-world destinations, such as a local coffee shop, that are the exact physical equivalent of the distance you've scrolled.

Designed to be placed facing down

 

neo is designed to be placed face down, revealing its angled, textile-covered back. Here, three colorful dots map to your personalized values. The active value mode's dot subtly enlarges, providing an ambient visual cue that your phone understands your intentions, even from a distance.

06

Ugli

Ugli addresses a critical imbalance: in the U.S., 50% of fresh produce is discarded due to appearance, impacting our environment, even as 23.5 million people in food deserts struggle for access to healthy food. Ugli transforms this overlooked, "ugly" produce into wholesome juices, bridging a crucial gap to nourish communities and advance a more sustainable food system.

 

Role: Design Lead, UX & Industrial Design

2017

"precise, trustworthy, approachable, reliable"
Image of primary brand logo

That’s Ugli

 

It’s is an autonomous juicery combating food waste by transforming perfectly good "ugly" produce into nutritious juices. It provides fresh, healthy options to food deserts, fostering sustainability, community, and well-being. The juicery runs on electricity, partially from its solar rooftop, and features a recyclable carbon fiber body.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

Why Juice?

 

Bottling these cosmetically imperfect, yet perfectly fine, produce items as juice allows it to maximize capacity, fitting about 140 bottles—or 900 individual pieces of produce. This strategy ensures valuable, healthy food directly serves communities, not landfills.

Image of primary brand logo

A Day with Ugli

 

Ugli's day begins by collecting freshly made juice, which it then autonomously distributes to food deserts. Customers can effortlessly grab their bottles using Amazon Go technology or engage via an interactive window. At day's end, Ugli returns to its wireless charging pad, ready for the next day.

Image of primary brand logo

Accessible to Everyone

 

Ugli is designed for universal access. Once it's settled for the day, the juicery lowers itself to the ground. This thoughtful design, combined with integrated steps and an onboard ramp, ensures customers with all mobility needs can enter and exit the truck seamlessly.

About

My design journey began with art mentorship in Europe, followed by industrial design studies in high school and the U.S. This experience quickly revealed my core passion: seamlessly integrating digital and physical experiences, pushing beyond traditional product design.

 

Drawn to UX, I've since shaped impactful solutions across cloud platform, video calling, hardware, and automated home intelligence. Designing for the home especially excites me, allowing me to explore spatial interactions and harmonize physical and digital elements. I now specialize in crafting intuitive, cohesive solutions that connect our physical and digital worlds, bridging the gap between bits and atoms, digital and tabgible.

large letters

Naoshima, Japan 2024

1

Experience

Lead Senior UX Designer • Google Home

Orchestrating the vision and landing AI-powered voice and mobile experiences, to simplify automations and bring new levels of seamless convenience to the home by transforming how users interact with connected devices.

Hardware UX Designer • Google Home

Led the design of a novel Controller view for the Google Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen, enhancing visual design and user experience, while simultaneously directing a premium spatial interaction feature that became a key market differentiator, recognized by three patents.

UX Designer • Google Meet

Led the UX strategy and execution for critical video calling initiatives, crafting intuitive experiences across consumer, monetization, video tools, and safety, to enable essential, seamless connection for users worldwide during unprecedented challenges of the pandemic.

UX Designer • Google Cloud

Drove the creation of advanced developer experiences, solving critical challenges in unifying Google API management within a single, intuitive interface and optimizing the discovery process within the API marketplace.

Industrial Design Intern • Magic Leap

Collaborated with the industrial design team to shape the latest Magic Leap 2 XR headset and its battery pack, while also leading an independent accessory design project.

Industrial Design Intern • BMW

Directly influenced and shaped numerous VR, AI, ML, and IoT in-car projects, translating cutting-edge technical advancements into tangible user experiences, with two solutions fast-tracked for market consideration.

2

Rewards & Recognitions

Person working on laptop

D&DA Awards

Product design, Google Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen

Person working on laptop

Fast Company World Changing Ideas

Notable, Ugli Food Truck

Person working on laptop

Core77 Design Awards

Transportation Student Notable, Ugli Food Truck

 

Product Student Notable, Apollo

Person working on laptop

International Design Awards

Gold Office Category, Apollo

 

Honorable Mention, Ugli Food Truck

Person working on laptop

European Product Design Awards

Emerging Product Designer of the Year

 

Platinum for Sustainable Design, Ugli Food Truck

 

Gold for Packaging Design, Ugli Food Truck

 

Gold for Office Equipment, Arc

 

Bronze for Other Category, Apollo

Contact

lukovicanja@gmail.com

 

linkedin.com/in/anja-lukovic

*[AN-yah]

In Seattle, WA • Iz Beograda :)

All Rights Reserved

Anja* Lukovic

About

Contact

Nest

01

Home

02

Meet

03

BMW

04

neo

05

Ugli

06

Anja* leads UX for Automations & Intelligence on Google Home, orchestrating AI-powered voice and mobile experiences that simplify home convenience. Her foundation in industrial design uniquely shapes her approach, emphasizing systems thinking, material empathy, and the user's physical environment. This perspective drives the seamless interactions she crafts across her work at Google, Magic Leap, and BMW.

01

Nest

My work focused on refining the iconing Google Nest Thermostat’s celebrated visual design and enhancing the user experience. Simultaneously, I drove a premium spatial interaction feature that secured three patents, setting a new standard for intuitive control and reinforcing Nest's position as a beloved device.

 

Role: Hardware UX Designer

2021-2023

Thermostat Work Highlights

1 “Farsight” Spatial Interaction

2 Redesigned, Dynamic Controller

3 Idle, Heating, and Cooling States

4 Aligned Digital & Physical

1 “Farsight” Spatial Interaction

I creared a dynamic system of fully customizable interfaces. Leveraging proximity detection, the device intelligently adapts, displaying glanceable information from afar and seamlessly revealing more detail as you approach. This ensures you always see the right information, at the right level of detail, transforming the thermostat into a truly intuitive and responsive home interface.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

2 Redesigned, Dynamic Controller

 

I designed a novel Controller view that seamlessly blends functionality with the Nest Thermostat's iconic minimal aesthetic. This innovative interface dynamically expands when actively engaged, providing comprehensive controls, and then gracefully collapses to a sleek, minimal state when not in use. This ensures the hardware's premium design remains uncompromised, allowing its elegance to shine while delivering a rich interactive experience precisely when needed.

 

 

Image of primary brand logo

3 Idle, Cooling, and Heating States

 

I worked on designing the Controller's visuals for its Idle, Cooling, and Heating states, ensuring they carried the legacy of previous Nest Thermostat generations. The primary challenge was striking the right balance between the familiar and the new, all while respecting the hardware's premium aesthetic. My solution involved a gradient approach that gracefully hides the screen's border, creating a seamless and expansive visual experience.

4 Aligned Digital and Physical

 

My work extended to aligning the new on-device Controller with its in-app counterpart. The goal was to deliver a premium first-party experience, ensuring seamless visual and functional continuation from hardware to software. This required designing the in-app controller to precisely match the established Google Home app's design system, creating a unified and cohesive user journey.

02

Home

I lead UX for the Google Home Automations & Intelligence program, designing AI-powered mobile and voice solutions that orchestrate connected devices. My team’s work transforms daily routines into moments of effortless convenience. In 2025, I’m on a mission to make automations more approachable, delightful, and powerful.

 

Role: Lead Senior UX Designer

2023-Present

Home Work Highlights

1 Home Automations & Intelligence Program Ladership

2 New Automation Foundation

3 First AI Feature for the Home

4 “Help me create” in Home App

...more work landing soon

1 Automations & Intelligence Program Lead

Leading the UX for Home Automations, I oversee the work across each touchpoint, including the in-app tab, web, AI creation tools, automation capabilities, and hardware journeys.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

2 New Automation Foundation

 

My work involved the redesign of the Automation Visual Editor, making manual setup more intuitive and powerful. This brought new capabilities and a refreshed look, offering greater flexibility. A core enhancement was the new conditions section, providing advanced device state and presence triggers for finer smart home control.

3 First AI Feature for the Home

 

My focus for "Help me script" was to make hihgly complex automations accessible within the Google Home script editor. I drove the design of this AI tool, enabling users to describe automations naturally. The YAML code gets instantly generated, empowering even non-technical users to create advanced automations.

Image of primary brand logo

4 “Help me create” in Home App

 

To significantly simplify automation creation, I led the integration of generative AI into the Google Home app. "Help me create” enables users to describe desired automations in plain language and create them witin seconds. I dove into the technical aspects of defining our custom LLM's training protocol, ensuring Gemini models seamlessly set up automations and offered relevant suggestions for a more intuitive user experience.

03

Meet

Starting in February 2020, I had the privilege of leading multiple projects for Google Meet. Faced with urgent global needs, I drove the effort to make Meet free, ensuring worldwide connectivity during the pandemic. My role also included delivering highly requested features like tiled layouts and crucial safety tools, directly enhancing user experience when human connection mattered most.

 

Role: UX Designer

2020-2021

Meet Work Highlights

1 Free Meet for Everyone

2 Core Feature Meet Redesign

3 Meeting Safety & Security

4 Picture in Picture

5 Slides in Meet Integration

1 Free Meet for Everyone

My most impactful work at Google Meet involved leading the UX to make the platform free for everyone during the pandemic. This rapid, cross-functional undertaking transformed Meet from an enterprise tool into an intuitive solution, profoundly connecting millions globally when it mattered most.

2 Core Feature Redesign

 

As Google Meet rapidly scaled for consumer use during the pandemic, I led the design of Tiled Layouts. Historically an enterprise product, Meet lacked a direct need for individual participant views. My work helped introduce this newly essential feature, allowing people to see each other face-to-face and maintain vital personal connections.

Image of primary brand logo

3 Meeting Safety and Security

 

While the world rapidly shifted online, virtual meeting safety plummeted. It became critically important to keep people protected on calls. I led multiple efforts to address this, enhancing user protection across Google Meet through new host controls, robust abuse reporting mechanisms, integrated waiting rooms, and clear safety communication.

Image of primary brand logo

4 Slides in Meet Integration

 

I collaborated with the Google Slides team to lead the integration of Slides directly into Google Meet. This initiative was designed to boost presenter confidence and maintain focus by providing a seamless, native presentation experience within meetings.

Image of primary brand logo

5 Picture in Picture

 

I helped bring bring Picture-in-Picture functionality to Google Meet, significantly enhancing user multi-tasking capabilities. Key challenges included designing a non-intrusive yet accessible mini-window, ensuring seamless audio/video continuity during transitions, and optimizing for minimal screen real estate impact across various device sizes.

04

BMW

At the BMW Tech Office, a hub for R&D innovation, I directly influenced and shaped numerous confidential VR, AI, ML, and IoT in-car projects. My role involved translating these cutting-edge technical advancements into tangible user experiences.

 

Role: Industrial & UX Intern

2017-2016

BMW Work Highlights

1 XR Passenger Experience

Other confidential work

1 XR Passenger Experience

During this project, I conducted initial user experience research and conceptualization for an innovative passenger experience. My work involved immersing myself in VR, mapping in-car VR user journeys, and sketching in VR. I leveraged my industrial design background to shape physical interactions within the virtual realm, exploring critical UX opportunities in in-car immersion, situational awareness, and fluid virtual-to-physical transitions. This project later evolved into a collaboration between Meta and BMW.

Challenges of in-car XR

 

Designing for in-car VR posed unique UX challenges. We focused on mitigating motion sickness, balancing virtual immersion with situational awareness of the physical car. Crucially, creating seamless transitions between virtual and real worlds was essential to prevent user disorientation.

05

neo

Before platrom-wide digital wellbeing efforts, I reimagined what a smartphone can be. Instead of devices built for the "attention economy"—constantly pulling us in—neo shifts the focus to supporting time well spent. This project challenges how our current phones, designed for endless engagement, often interrupt our most valuable moments. neo uses existing technology to create a smarter mobile device, one that understands us and prioritizes what matters, helping us stay present in the moment.

 

Personal project

2018

"precise, trustworthy, approachable, reliable"
Image of primary brand logo

Get started

 

neo's onboarding helps you set intentions: you'll get a brief overview, set your daily screen time goal, and select your top three values. These values are pivotal, dynamically guiding how neo organizes information and adjusts its behavior based on your context, ensuring it supports what matters most to you.

Image of primary brand logo

Dynamic, Contextual Home Screen

 

neo's home screen intelligently adapts to your context. It prioritizes what matters, bringing apps relevant to your current values to the surface—like work apps when you're at the office—while visually "sinking" distractions to help you stay focused.

Image of primary brand logo

Keep Track of Time Spent

 

neo fosters healthier digital habits by providing a quick overview of your phone usage against daily goals. It quantifies screen time into years of life lived, offering a unique perspective on your digital presence and encouraging mindful engagement.

Image of primary brand logo

Mapping the Digital Footprint

 

neo provides a way to understand your digital habits by quantifying scrolling as a physical distance, measured in feet. To make this tangible, it then offers real-world destinations, such as a local coffee shop, that are the exact physical equivalent of the distance you've scrolled.

Designed to be placed facing down

 

neo is designed to be placed face down, revealing its angled, textile-covered back. Here, three colorful dots map to your personalized values. The active value mode's dot subtly enlarges, providing an ambient visual cue that your phone understands your intentions, even from a distance.

06

Ugli

Ugli addresses a critical imbalance: in the U.S., 50% of fresh produce is discarded due to appearance, impacting our environment, even as 23.5 million people in food deserts struggle for access to healthy food. Ugli transforms this overlooked, "ugly" produce into wholesome juices, bridging a crucial gap to nourish communities and advance a more sustainable food system.

 

Role: Design Lead, UX & Industrial Design

2017

"precise, trustworthy, approachable, reliable"
Image of primary brand logo

That’s Ugli

 

It’s is an autonomous juicery combating food waste by transforming perfectly good "ugly" produce into nutritious juices. It provides fresh, healthy options to food deserts, fostering sustainability, community, and well-being. The juicery runs on electricity, partially from its solar rooftop, and features a recyclable carbon fiber body.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

Why Juice?

 

Bottling these cosmetically imperfect, yet perfectly fine, produce items as juice allows it to maximize capacity, fitting about 140 bottles—or 900 individual pieces of produce. This strategy ensures valuable, healthy food directly serves communities, not landfills.

Image of primary brand logo

A Day with Ugli

 

Ugli's day begins by collecting freshly made juice, which it then autonomously distributes to food deserts. Customers can effortlessly grab their bottles using Amazon Go technology or engage via an interactive window. At day's end, Ugli returns to its wireless charging pad, ready for the next day.

Image of primary brand logo

Accessible to Everyone

 

Ugli is designed for universal access. Once it's settled for the day, the juicery lowers itself to the ground. This thoughtful design, combined with integrated steps and an onboard ramp, ensures customers with all mobility needs can enter and exit the truck seamlessly.

About

My design journey began with art mentorship in Europe, followed by industrial design studies in high school and the U.S. This experience quickly revealed my core passion: seamlessly integrating digital and physical experiences, pushing beyond traditional product design.

 

Drawn to UX, I've since shaped impactful solutions across cloud platform, video calling, hardware, and automated home intelligence. Designing for the home especially excites me, allowing me to explore spatial interactions and harmonize physical and digital elements. I now specialize in crafting intuitive, cohesive solutions that connect our physical and digital worlds, bridging the gap between bits and atoms, digital and tabgible.

large letters

Naoshima, Japan 2024

1

Experience

Lead Senior UX Designer • Google Home

Orchestrating the vision and landing AI-powered voice and mobile experiences, to simplify automations and bring new levels of seamless convenience to the home by transforming how users interact with connected devices.

Hardware UX Designer • Google Home

Led the design of a novel Controller view for the Google Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen, enhancing visual design and user experience, while simultaneously directing a premium spatial interaction feature that became a key market differentiator, recognized by three patents.

UX Designer • Google Meet

Led the UX strategy and execution for critical video calling initiatives, crafting intuitive experiences across consumer, monetization, video tools, and safety, to enable essential, seamless connection for users worldwide during unprecedented challenges of the pandemic.

UX Designer • Google Cloud

Drove the creation of advanced developer experiences, solving critical challenges in unifying Google API management within a single, intuitive interface and optimizing the discovery process within the API marketplace.

Industrial Design Intern • Magic Leap

Collaborated with the industrial design team to shape the latest Magic Leap 2 XR headset and its battery pack, while also leading an independent accessory design project.

Industrial Design Intern • BMW

Directly influenced and shaped numerous VR, AI, ML, and IoT in-car projects, translating cutting-edge technical advancements into tangible user experiences, with two solutions fast-tracked for market consideration.

2

Rewards & Recognitions

Person working on laptop

D&DA Awards

Product design, Google Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen

Person working on laptop

Fast Company World Changing Ideas

Notable, Ugli Food Truck

Person working on laptop

Core77 Design Awards

Transportation Student Notable, Ugli Food Truck

 

Product Student Notable, Apollo

Person working on laptop

International Design Awards

Gold Office Category, Apollo

 

Honorable Mention, Ugli Food Truck

Person working on laptop

European Product Design Awards

Emerging Product Designer of the Year

 

Platinum for Sustainable Design, Ugli Food Truck

 

Gold for Packaging Design, Ugli Food Truck

 

Gold for Office Equipment, Arc

 

Bronze for Other Category, Apollo

Contact

lukovicanja@gmail.com

 

linkedin.com/in/anja-lukovic

*[AN-yah]

In Seattle, WA • Iz Beograda :)

All Rights Reserved

Anja* Lukovic

Nest

01

Home

02

Meet

03

BMW

04

neo

05

Ugli

06

This is a curated selection of work. Detailed portfolio is available upon request.

About

Contact

Anja* leads UX for Automations & Intelligence on Google Home, orchestrating AI-powered voice and mobile experiences that simplify home convenience. Her foundation in industrial design uniquely shapes her approach, emphasizing systems thinking, material empathy, and the user's physical environment. This perspective drives the seamless interactions she crafts across her work at Google, Magic Leap, and BMW.

01

Nest

My work centered on refining the iconic Google Nest Thermostat's celebrated visual design and enhancing its user experience, building on the legacy of its predecessors. Simultaneously, I drove a premium spatial interaction feature that secured three patents, setting a new standard for intuitive control and reinforcing Nest's position as a truly delightful and beloved device.

 

Role: Hardware UX Designer

2021-2023

Thermostat Work Highlights

1 “Farsight” Spatial Interaction

2 Redesigned, Dynamic Controller

3 Idle, Heating, and Cooling States

4 Aligned Digital & Physical

1 “Farsight” Spatial Interaction

I led the design of Farsight, creating a dynamic system of fully customizable interfaces. Leveraging proximity detection, the device intelligently adapts, displaying glanceable information from afar and seamlessly revealing more detail as you approach. This ensures you always see the right information, at the right level of detail, transforming the thermostat into a truly intuitive and responsive home interface.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

2 Redesigned, Dynamic Controller

 

I designed a Controller view that seamlessly blends functionality with the thermostat’s minimal aesthetic. The radial dynamically expands when the bangle is turned, providing precise control, and then collapses to a sleek state when not in use. This ensures the hardware's premium design remains uncompromised, allowing its elegance to shine while delivering a rich interactive experience when needed.

Image of primary brand logo

3 Idle, Cooling, and Heating States

 

I worked on designing the Controller's visuals for its Idle, Cooling, and Heating states, ensuring they carried the legacy of previous Nest Thermostat generations. The primary challenge was striking the right balance between the familiar and the new, all while respecting the hardware's premium aesthetic. My solution involved a gradient approach that gracefully hides the screen's border, creating a seamless and expansive visual experience.

4 Aligned Digital and Physical

 

My work extended to aligning the new on-device Controller with its in-app counterpart. The goal was to deliver a premium first-party experience, ensuring seamless visual and functional continuation from hardware to software. This required designing the in-app controller to precisely match the established Google Home app's design system, creating a unified and cohesive user journey.

02

Home

I lead UX for the Google Home Automations & Intelligence program, designing AI-powered mobile and voice solutions that orchestrate connected devices. My team’s work transforms daily routines into moments of effortless convenience. In 2025, I’m on a mission to make automations more approachable, delightful, and powerful.

 

Role: Lead Senior UX Designer

2023-Present

Home Work Highlights

1 Automations & Intelligence Program Lead

2 New Automation Foundation

3 First AI Feature for the Home

4 “Help me create” in Home App

...more work landing soon

1 Automations & Intelligence Program Lead

Leading the UX for Home Automations, I oversee the work across each touchpoint, including the in-app tab, web, AI creation tools, automation capabilities, and hardware journeys.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

2 New Automation Foundation

 

My work involved the redesign of the Automation Visual Editor, making manual setup more intuitive and powerful. This brought new capabilities and a refreshed look, offering greater flexibility. A core enhancement was the new conditions section, providing advanced device state and presence triggers for finer smart home control.

3 First AI Feature for the Home

 

My focus for "Help me script" was to make highly complex automations accessible within the Google Home script editor. I drove the design of this AI tool, enabling users to describe automations naturally. The YAML code gets instantly generated, empowering even non-technical users to create advanced automations.

Image of primary brand logo

4 “Help me create” in Home App

 

To simplify automation creation further, I led the integration of generative AI into the Google Home app. "Help me create” enables users to describe desired automations in plain language and save them within seconds. I also dove into defining our custom LLM's training material, ensuring Gemini models seamlessly set up automations and offer relevant suggestions for a more helpful user experience.

03

Meet

Starting in February 2020, I had the privilege of leading multiple projects for Google Meet. Faced with urgent global needs, I drove the effort to make Meet free, ensuring worldwide connectivity during the pandemic. My role also included delivering highly requested features like tiled layouts and crucial safety tools, directly enhancing user experience when human connection mattered most.

 

Role: UX Designer

2020-2021

Meet Work Highlights

1 Free Meet for Everyone

2 Core Feature Meet Redesign

3 Meeting Safety & Security

4 Picture in Picture

5 Slides in Meet Integration

1 Free Meet for Everyone

My most impactful work at Google Meet involved leading the UX to make the platform free for everyone during the pandemic. This rapid, cross-functional undertaking transformed Meet from an enterprise tool into an intuitive solution, profoundly connecting millions globally when it mattered most.

2 Core Feature Redesign

 

As Google Meet rapidly scaled for consumer use during the pandemic, I led the design of Tiled Layouts. Historically an enterprise product, Meet lacked a direct need for individual participant views. My work helped introduce this newly essential feature, allowing people to see each other face-to-face and maintain vital personal connections.

Image of primary brand logo

3 Meeting Safety and Security

 

While the world rapidly shifted online, virtual meeting safety plummeted. It became critically important to keep people protected on calls. I led multiple efforts to address this, enhancing user protection across Google Meet through new host controls, robust abuse reporting mechanisms, integrated waiting rooms, and clear safety communication.

Image of primary brand logo

4 Slides in Meet Integration

 

I collaborated with the Google Slides team to lead the integration of Slides directly into Google Meet. This initiative was designed to boost presenter confidence and maintain focus by providing a seamless, native presentation experience within meetings.

Image of primary brand logo

5 Picture in Picture

 

I helped bring bring Picture-in-Picture functionality to Google Meet, significantly enhancing user multi-tasking capabilities. Key challenges included designing a non-intrusive yet accessible mini-window, ensuring seamless audio/video continuity during transitions, and optimizing for minimal screen real estate impact across various device sizes.

04

BMW

At the BMW Tech Office, a hub for R&D innovation, I directly influenced and shaped numerous confidential VR, AI, ML, and IoT in-car projects. My role involved translating these cutting-edge technical advancements into tangible user experiences.

 

Role: Industrial & UX Intern

2017-2016

BMW Work Highlights

1 XR Passenger Experience

Other confidential work

1 XR Passenger Experience

During this project, I conducted initial user experience research and conceptualization for an innovative passenger experience. My work involved immersing myself in VR, mapping in-car VR user journeys, and sketching in VR. I leveraged my industrial design background to shape physical interactions within the virtual realm, exploring critical UX opportunities in in-car immersion, situational awareness, and fluid virtual-to-physical transitions. This project later evolved into a collaboration between Meta and BMW.

Challenges of in-car XR

 

Designing for in-car VR posed unique UX challenges. We focused on mitigating motion sickness, balancing virtual immersion with situational awareness of the physical car. Crucially, creating seamless transitions between virtual and real worlds was essential to prevent user disorientation.

05

neo

Before industry-wide digital wellbeing efforts, I reimagined what a smartphone can be. Instead of devices built for the "attention economy"—constantly pulling us in—neo shifts the focus to supporting time well spent. This project challenges how our current phones, designed for endless engagement, often interrupt our most valuable moments. neo uses existing technology to create an experience that puts people first, helping them stay present.

 

Personal project

2018

"precise, trustworthy, approachable, reliable"
Image of primary brand logo

Get started

 

neo's onboarding helps you set intentions: you'll get a brief overview, set your daily screen time goal, and select your top three values. These values are pivotal, dynamically guiding how neo organizes information and adjusts its behavior based on your context, ensuring it supports what matters most to you.

Image of primary brand logo

Dynamic, Contextual Home Screen

 

neo's home screen intelligently adapts to your context. It prioritizes what matters, bringing apps relevant to your current values to the surface—like work apps when you're at the office—while visually "sinking" distractions to help you stay focused.

Image of primary brand logo

Keep Track of Time Spent

 

neo fosters healthier digital habits by providing a quick overview of your phone usage against daily goals. It quantifies screen time into years of life lived, offering a unique perspective on your digital presence and encouraging mindful engagement.

Image of primary brand logo

Mapping the Digital Footprint

 

neo provides a way to understand your digital habits by quantifying scrolling as a physical distance, measured in feet. To make this tangible, it then offers real-world destinations, such as a local coffee shop, that are the exact physical equivalent of the distance you've scrolled.

Designed to be placed facing down

 

neo is designed to be placed face down, revealing its angled, textile-covered back. Here, three colorful dots map to your personalized values. The active value mode's dot subtly enlarges, providing an ambient visual cue that your phone understands your intentions, even from a distance.

06

Ugli

Ugli addresses a critical imbalance: in the U.S., 50% of fresh produce is discarded due to appearance, impacting our environment, even as 23.5 million people in food deserts struggle for access to healthy food. Ugli transforms this overlooked, "ugly" produce into wholesome juices, bridging a crucial gap to nourish communities and advance a more sustainable food system.

 

Role: Design Lead, UX & Industrial Design

2017

"precise, trustworthy, approachable, reliable"
Image of primary brand logo

That’s Ugli

 

It’s is an autonomous juicery combating food waste by transforming perfectly good "ugly" produce into nutritious juices. It provides fresh, healthy options to food deserts, fostering sustainability, community, and well-being. The juicery runs on electricity, partially from its solar rooftop, and features a recyclable carbon fiber body.

Image of primary brand logo
Image of primary brand logo

Why Juice?

 

Bottling these cosmetically imperfect, yet perfectly fine, produce items as juice allows it to maximize capacity, fitting about 140 bottles—or 900 individual pieces of produce. This strategy ensures valuable, healthy food directly serves communities, not landfills.

Image of primary brand logo

A Day with Ugli

 

Ugli's day begins by collecting freshly made juice, which it then autonomously distributes to food deserts. Customers can effortlessly grab their bottles using Amazon Go technology or engage via an interactive window. At day's end, Ugli returns to its wireless charging pad, ready for the next day.

Image of primary brand logo

Accessible to Everyone

 

Ugli is designed for universal access. Once it's settled for the day, the juicery lowers itself to the ground. This thoughtful design, combined with integrated steps and an onboard ramp, ensures customers with all mobility needs can enter and exit the truck seamlessly.

About

My design journey began with art mentorship in Europe, followed by industrial design studies in high school and the U.S. This experience quickly revealed my core passion: seamlessly integrating digital and physical experiences, pushing beyond traditional product design.

 

Drawn to UX, I've since shaped impactful solutions across cloud platform, video calling, hardware, and automated home intelligence. Designing for the home especially excites me, allowing me to explore spatial interactions and harmonize physical and digital elements. I now specialize in crafting intuitive, cohesive solutions that connect our physical and digital worlds, bridging the gap between bits and atoms, digital and tangible.

large letters

Naoshima, Japan 2024

1

Experience

Lead Senior UX Designer • Google Home

Orchestrating the vision and landing AI-powered voice and mobile experiences, to simplify automations and bring new levels of seamless convenience to the home by transforming how users interact with connected devices.

Hardware UX Designer • Google Home

Led the design of a novel Controller view for the Google Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen, enhancing visual design and user experience, while simultaneously directing a premium spatial interaction feature that became a key market differentiator, recognized by three patents.

UX Designer • Google Meet

Led the UX strategy and execution for critical video calling initiatives, crafting intuitive experiences across consumer, monetization, video tools, and safety, to enable essential, seamless connection for users worldwide during unprecedented challenges of the pandemic.

UX Designer • Google Cloud

Drove the creation of advanced developer experiences, solving critical challenges in unifying Google API management within a single, intuitive interface and optimizing the discovery process within the API marketplace.

Industrial Design Intern • Magic Leap

Collaborated with the industrial design team to shape the latest Magic Leap 2 XR headset and its battery pack, while also leading an independent accessory design project.

Industrial Design Intern • BMW

Directly influenced and shaped numerous VR, AI, ML, and IoT in-car projects, translating cutting-edge technical advancements into tangible user experiences, with two solutions fast-tracked for market consideration.

2

Rewards & Recognitions

Person working on laptop

D&DA Awards

Product design, Google Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen

Person working on laptop

Fast Company World Changing Ideas

Notable, Ugli Food Truck

Person working on laptop

Core77 Design Awards

Transportation Student Notable, Ugli Food Truck

 

Product Student Notable, Apollo

Person working on laptop

International Design Awards

Gold Office Category, Apollo

 

Honorable Mention, Ugli Food Truck

Person working on laptop

European Product Design Awards

Emerging Product Designer of the Year

 

Platinum for Sustainable Design, Ugli Food Truck

 

Gold for Packaging Design, Ugli Food Truck

 

Gold for Office Equipment, Arc

 

Bronze for Other Category, Apollo

Contact

lukovicanja@gmail.com

 

linkedin.com/in/anja-lukovic

*[AN-yah]

In Seattle, WA • iz Beograda :)

All Rights Reserved