Competitive analysis
12 Competitors: Insights and Takeaways
The competition on note-taking is strong among US edTech app, generating quizzes, summarizing notes, and overall creating personalized learning strategies are the most popular features.
User Survey
How Do 103 US Students Study?
A Rapid 103-Response Survey Delving into AI, Study Methods, and Homework Challenges. Our aim is to confirm or challenge assumptions, guiding tailored tech solutions.
The top 3 challenges users face are study-strategy lacking, meeting homework deadlines, and inefficient note-taking.
01
95% users take notes in class, with 45% users taking them on paper
02
94% of users review their notes for exams/assignments.
03
PROJECT SCOPING
The Power of AI Note-Taking & Essay Outlines
Competitive analysis and survey insights highlighted the significance of note-taking and the need for enhancement of Knowunity's chatbot for essay outlines among US students. We discussed with our client and decided to focus on two key aims:
01. How might we refine our approach to meet the note-taking demands of US students.
02. How might we address deficiencies in the AI chatbot's current capacity to generate effective essay outlines.
WIREFRAMe & PROTOTYPe
From Vision to Reality
We crafted the wireframe to outline core features and align our vision for interactions and layouts. Following this, I independently designed the high-fidelity prototype in just two days.
Interview & USABILITY TESTING
Concept Validation with Students Aged 12–17
Research goal: Understanding the Appeal of Essay Outlining and Note Assistance among 10 Middle and High School Students. Both remote and in-person moderated tests are conducted.
15 initial outreach
10 moderated user interviews completed
40 minutes average testing time
400 minutes total interview engaged
Note Genius - scenario & tasks:
Note Genius - scenario & tasks:Scenario: You are a student and you have an exam coming up next week. You want to study the notes you created for your History class using different techniques.
1. Open Knowunity and go to the “Create” tab. Go to “AI Notes'' to input your notes. Tell us what are your thoughts while doing it.
2. Select “Take a picture of my notes” to input your notes. Tell us what are your thoughts while doing it.
3. Now go through the 4 features one by one. Tell us how you feel about each of them while you go through.
4. You’ve already seen the 4 options now - Summary, Quiz, Flashcards, and the Study Bot. Which one do you think you will use the most and why?
Key insights:
10/10 users love the AI quiz feature. 7/10 users have never used quizzes to review notes but are excited to use them.
6/10 users love the flashcards feature, as this is part of their usual study habits.
3/10 users like the AI summary feature. We were surprised that it was not as popular. Users explained that they’d rather look at their notes highlights than use the feature.
AI Chatbot - scenario & tasks:
Scenario: You are writing an essay on ‘Abraham Lincoln’ (high school student) and ‘Your Favorite Season’ (middle school student) and you are just getting started. You decide to take help from Knowunity’s chatbot.
1. Open the Knowunity app and find the chatbot. Take some time to explore the bot. Talk about your process out loud.
2. You want to get some ideas on how to create an outline for your essay.
3. What would you do? Talk about your process out loud.
4. What do you think about the response? What worked well and what didn’t? What other questions would you like to ask the chatbot, now after you have the outline?
Key insights:
7/10 users expressed frustrations with reading the content provided by the chatbot. Since all of them mentioned that they used templates for their essays, they expected the chatbot to provide something similar.
6/10 users love the flashcards feature, as this is part of their usual study habits.
FINAL PRESENTATION
Clients Love It! Students Want It!
As we concluded the project, we presented our findings and the final presentation to the clients. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and we engaged in discussions about planning the implementation of the proposed features and changes.
Group picture taken by the end of our presentation
REFLECTION
Insights That Stay With Me
Articulating Design Decisions
I have always worked to hone my skill in effectively communicating design decisions, a skill I came to strongly value after reading Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever. For this project, the challenge was clear: improve note-taking tools and enhance an AI chatbot’s ability to create essay outlines for U.S. students.
Throughout the research and exploration process, we ensured regular updates with concise bullet-point insights that made it easy for our client to understand our direction. These early, focused discussions allowed us to accurately frame our design choices around both the user insights and the client’s business goals, aligning everyone’s expectations. By emphasizing empathy and aligning our decisions with stakeholder priorities, we built trust and fostered collaboration.
Ultimately, this approach led to productive outcomes, with stakeholders embracing the proposed features and planning their implementation. It was a powerful reminder that design is as much about communication as it is about creation.
Navigating Disagreements with Clients
Disagreements with clients aren't roadblocks but opportunities to merge creativity with strategy. During our weekly meeting with Leon (One of our client), he gave us the suggestion of scoping the project to an easy creation feature. However since our overall goal is to explore all the AI possibilities for Knowunity to close the competition gap, we saw a huge opportunity and user needs for the "Note-taking" tool. Leveraging user research to validate our hypotheses, we proposed new ideas to the client. By prioritizing business goals over client directives, we crafted a remarkable win-win solution that not only garnered positive feedback but also helped the client understand what end-users truly want. Additionally, we provided actionable feedback to enhance the essay creation tool, ensuring both tasks were effectively completed and validated.
