About Me

I'm Nicole Brennan, Senior AI Product Manager & Designer and a Board-Certified Cognitive Specialist, with two decades of experience designing systems that serve real people and actually work.

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At Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, I lead product design for NextSpace, an AI-facilitated event platform, and I originated the Personality Lab, a framework for building and evaluating AI personas with intentional, measurable behavioral consistency. I serve as the design authority on human-AI interaction: how AI systems disclose their own behavior, how user agency gets preserved, and how cognitive accessibility gets built into a system structurally rather than bolted on afterward. I've also led product design for Keyring, a decentralized digital identity platform, and I support Harvard's Accessibility Office by converting accessibility guidance into instructional training for staff.

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Before Harvard, I built products used by millions: a full redesign of the federal government's digital front door (USA.gov), voter registration workflows on Vote.gov, and personalized energy reports deployed across millions of households, alongside earlier work in fintech, education, and defense.

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I don't just check boxes. I design for cognitive load, trust, and real-world complexity, because good design has to work for everyone, not just the default user. That's meant leading cross-functional teams, conducting research with assistive technology users, mentoring emerging designers and Harvard AI interns, and speaking at venues like CSUN and Harvard's Accessibility Summit on what AI-facilitated inclusion actually looks like in practice.

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Outside of work, I explore the same ideas through photography and Buddhist philosophy: clarity, attention, and how people make sense of their experience.

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Let's build something usable, honest, and worth someone's time.