I’m a product design leader focused on AI and creative tools. Most recently, I led design for 
’s ecosystem platform, connecting Canva with the tools people already use.
That starts with understanding what people need, bringing the right people together, and giving ideas enough shape to test and learn.
Let’s make something together.
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2026I led the design direction for bringing people’s context into Canva AI, from the first app foundations to a new generation of connectors. I coordinated designers across Ecosystem, refined the experience hands-on and turned launch feedback into decisions.
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2025I led the team in shaping the publishing experience and API contract, collaborating across Canva and with partners like LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram to help people publish their designs directly from Canva.
Read the storyFor the launch of Canva Sheets, I led design collaboration across teams, partnering with product and engineering to align on platform principles and a roadmap for data imports. Together, we established new patterns that made apps a natural way to bring data into Canva.
I led design for the API Everywhere strategy, partnering with product and engineering to make Canva’s creative capabilities easier for other products and AI to build on. At its heart was a shift towards an API-first development culture.
2026I led the Intents Platform vision, from discovery through delivery and evolution, making app capabilities discoverable across Canva.
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2024In 2024, I led design for Apps SDK v2. I also worked with Growth on app bundling and shaped the foundations for premium Canva apps, giving developers more ways to build and earn.
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2022Before Canva, I led the team in shaping a vision for Gumtree’s transactional strategy, exploring how buyers and sellers could pay, arrange delivery and track an item.
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2019I helped Lysn move beyond its first MVP, working with founder Jonathan King on a clearer experience for people seeking support and the practitioners helping them.
2016One system for eight websites. I designed a shared template for the Just Auto network, bringing its specialist marketplaces together.
A shared foundation kept the network’s marketplace sites connected.
2016I redesigned the Foxtel Go app across phone, tablet and desktop, improving discovery, search and picking up where you left off.
Workshops, prototypes and testing helped the team shape the experience.
I’m Juan Córdoba, a product design leader working across ecosystems, apps and AI. I like asking “what if?”, then giving ideas enough shape that we can try them together.
At Canva, I led design for the ecosystem platform. I worked with the teams building apps and the people designing the tools those apps plugged into. My work moves between setting direction, coaching designers and getting hands-on with the details. I care about how an interaction feels and how the whole experience fits together.
I started in graphic design, making icons, and eventually found my way to Australia. Sketching, designing and building are how I think things through, whether I’m exploring an interaction or working out where a whole product could go. I like giving an idea enough shape that we can try it, question it, and find something we hadn’t considered.
I started at Canva in Admin Experience, spending my first six months or so as a Group Product Design Lead before joining Ecosystem. Before that, I led the product design team at Gumtree, imagining what buying and selling could become. In Ecosystem, I explored how people could use their favourite apps with Canva AI.
Right now, I’m excited about how short the distance between an idea and a working thing has become. It brings back some of the excitement I felt about the early web: so much to learn, so many things to try.
I’m exploring what I can make with creative apps, AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors. That means sketching, sharing references, prompting, revising and seeing how well the tools work together. Through Juan Creates, I want to share those building journeys: the decisions, the rough edges and what I learn along the way.
There’s usually a lot of thinking and iteration behind a polished demo. Building something changes my understanding of what it should be. I try an idea, look closely at the result, and change direction when it teaches me something new.
Judgement, taste and good questions matter throughout that process. I bring them to the teams I coach and the tools I explore. What excites me now is being able to sketch an idea and build enough of it to see if it works.
Have an idea?I’d love to hear about it
juanproductdesign@gmail.comWrite to me directly, or leave a note below.
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