Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

As the sole designer on the team, I designed a specialized document editor called "Notebook," designed to facilitate teacher-student interactions and streamline the grading process. My team included eight engineers, a user researcher, a data scientist, a content strategist, a product specialist, and a PM. Notebooks were used by over 75,000 students and 4,000 teachers across the U.S.

Leading Vision and Strategy

A year after Notebooks launched, we aimed to redefine its vision and drive further development. I took the lead in drafting the initial vision, aligning the team and stakeholders, and finalizing the strategic direction. This process involved collaborating with over 20 stakeholders, producing five drafts, and addressing 378 comments in Google Docs.

By thoroughly analyzing user research and data science, I identified the greatest pain point: the time it took for teachers to provide feedback. This insight shaped our new vision—to build digital tools that streamline the feedback process. We measured success by tracking the adoption of new features and the number of comments created within the platform.

Designing the Most Used Feature in Product History

With the vision in place, we began building the product to align with it. One of the key features was the "Comment Bank," which allowed teachers to easily reference and reuse comments they had previously written. Data showed that 90% of teachers reused at least 10% of their comments, and user research revealed that many were creating their own workarounds using Google Docs and Google Keep—clearly indicating a need for this feature.

I explored several design directions for the Comment Bank, and through usability testing, I refined the concept into an ideal design. Collaborating with engineering, we developed a simple yet effective MVP launch.

Boosting Key Metrics by 12% with Interaction Design

I conceived the "Comment Entry Point" project to make it faster and easier for teachers to insert comments into a Notebook. This was a direct application of Fitts' Law. By analyzing the interaction design, I noticed that commenting required extensive mouse movement and the click targets were small, making the process cumbersome.

To address this, I placed the commenting button directly next to the cursor, minimizing mouse movement and enlarging the click target. This design change resulted in a 12% increase in the key metric for the platform.

Comment Bank

The Comment Bank feature saw remarkable adoption, with 73% of teachers utilizing it and 25% of all comments being generated through it. This became the most widely adopted and used feature in the product's history.

Comment Entry Point

The Comment Entry Point feature led to a 12% increase in the number of comments made by teachers, further enhancing the platform's engagement and usability.