Accelerate your course learning with tailored Study GPTs
My Role
Led a design team of 3, responsible for defining user needs, streamlining user flows, and translating them into high-fidelity screens. Collaborated with the PM to build a strategic roadmap and project timeline, ensuring team alignment. Managed the handoff process to the development team, refining design documentation for clarity and efficient implementation.
Duration
2024.5 - present
Team
UX Designer: Ocean Zhang, Lin Li
Developer: Sam He, Chengling Yu, Junyuan Deng
Product Manager: Derrick Gong
Problem Statement
Streamlining Academic Workflows for Students
Students need an efficient way to manage coursework, source academic materials, and automate citations without additional effort. Existing GPT tools are too complex and lack targeted academic support.
How might we use GPTs to help students efficiently complete assignments, source references, and automate citations?
Context
What's Coursepals.AI?
Coursepals.AI is an all-in-one personalized GPT application for course learning and academic research. With Coursepals.AI, you can enhance your study routine by completing assignments up to five times faster using tailored GPTs for your courses while enjoying built-in access to academic sourcing APIs.
Business Requirement
Resolving Issues Uncovered During the 1.0 Demo Launch
While promoting Coursepals.AI at Stanford, we encountered challenges and realized the B2B approach was unsuitable for the product. We faced these two main marketing challenges:
Research & Interviews
Contrasting Needs of Students and Professors
We conducted 12+ interviews and countless surveys in Stanford Confessions to learn more about their pain point and willingness to purchase. We then developed the persona and user journey of our new target users.
Competitor Analysis
Everyone asked: Why not Chat GPT?
Coursepals.AI focuses on specific educational use cases, setting it apart from ChatGPT. While ChatGPT enables users to create their own GPTs, it’s still hindered by file upload limitations and a steep learning curve in setting up workflows. This complexity has led many users to overlook or avoid using the ‘Create Your Own GPT’ feature, especially when it comes to assisting with academic tasks or essays.
With this insight, I recapped the discussion with the CEO, CTO, and Head of Design to categorize use cases when users create new tasks. I need to learn more about the workflow and necessary information
Challenge
Users struggle with understanding and motivation to use personalized GPTs
Coursepals.AI focuses on specific educational use cases, setting it apart from ChatGPT. While ChatGPT enables users to create their own GPTs, it’s still hindered by file upload limitations and a steep learning curve in setting up workflows. This complexity has led many users to overlook or avoid using the ‘Create Your Own GPT’ feature, especially when it comes to assisting with academic tasks or essays.
For more complex tasks like creating models, datatables, databases, and ML engines, I designed a progressive disclosure wizard—a more optimized solution than a linear wizard to address personalized or specific management needs.
How I solve task 1
Started by GenAI product design thinking
I adopted GenAI product thinking to guide the UX design and use flow. Two key needs drove our approach: 1) streamline the user workflow and 2) reduce the learning curve while improving efficiency.
Leveraging fundamental GenAI design principles— automation of repetitive tasks and minimal user input —we transformed the new use flow of creating instructions.
Obstacles Identified in Testing
Initial solution was stalled by both users and the dev team
We quickly got some feedback from the dev team and our beta users, although not positive feedback.
