Competitive analysis
12 Competitors: One for Every Craving!
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
103 US Students' Study Habits
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
Enhance US Note-Taking & Essay Outlines With AI
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
User Insights: NoteGenius & AI Chatbot
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!
As we concluded the project, we presented our findings and the final presentation to the clients. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive, expressing a high likelihood of implementing the proposed features and changes.
Group picture taken by the end of our presentation
REFLECTION
Insights That Stay With Me
Articulating Design Decisions
Communicating design decisions is pivotal, whether within teams, with clients, or individuals outside the project scope. I've always regarded it as a critical part of the design process. I previously had read the book "Articulate design decisions" by Tom Greever and was happy to implement the things I learned from the book into this client project. A good designer needs to be a good communicator. Simplifying intricate design choices into relatable stories aids client comprehension. Visual tools such as sketches and prototypes facilitate collaboration by making concepts tangible. Employing empathy and attentive listening tailors communication to align with client objectives while enhancing our understanding of users.
Navigating Disagreements with Clients
Disagreements with clients aren't roadblocks but opportunities to merge creativity with strategy. During our weekly meeting with Leon (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 solution that not only garnered positive feedback but also aligned with our innovative vision (And we also gave improvement feedback on the essay creation tool).
