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Designing an AI tool to remove friction before studying begins
As Research Lead across a team of 4, I led research strategy and synthesis across a 4-person design team, served as primary client contact throughout a 2-week sprint, and led the transition into synthesis — including bringing the client a finding that ran counter to their original ask.
SKILLS
TIMELINE
TEAM
UX RESEARCH
UX DESIGN
AUG 2025 - DEC 2025 (10 WEEKS)
MIKAYLA ACOSTA, SOPHIA CLANCY, GRACE ZHANG, KAREN PHAM
SUMMARY
Notability wanted to understand how AI changes the way students study.
Notability is the leading note-taking and PDF annotation company that allows users to combine handwritten notes with sketches, images, and audio recordings in a single document. They challenged Berkeley Innovation, a student-run design consultancy at UC Berkeley, to uncover a product opportunities to help US college students personalize their learning experience.
THE ASK
Notability gave us an open-ended problem.
How might we…
Design a more inclusive AI-powered note-taking and study experience that supports students with learning differences using Notability?
AND evolve Learn on the web app to be more gamified, personalized, and genuinely help students learn in a fun, engaging way?
Meet Notability Learn.
Learn, an AI feature streamlining studying with smart notes, summaries, transcripts, quizzes, and a chatbot that understands your content. With this new feature, they wanted to explore possible directions to diversify students’ needs met, specifically college students with unique learning needs.
OVERVIEW
Introducing Notability Study Session.
AI does the planning, so you can do the studying.
We designed Study Session, an immersive study experience within Notability that helps students prioritize content when reviewing course material. Study Session utilizes AI to recommend a study plan based on students’ actual course content, and break down difficult concepts into small, actionable steps.
With Study Session, reviewing for exams has never been easier!
Get suggestions based on your own progress
Recommendations based on your personal progression through material, quiz scores, and suggests content to review based on your performance — because no learner is the same.
Break down your goals in your own words
Type in any goals, and have AI transform them microtasks based on level of familiarity with content and what will best support effective learning and memorization.
Stay on track using Focus mode
Set a pomodoro timer within Notability, and enable an optional “Focus Mode” to turn off potentially distracting notifications from other apps.
IMPACT
Our concept anticipated a direction Notability later shipped.
Study Timer
In April 2026, Notability introduced Study Timer onto their iOS app! It includes features such as a Pomodoro Timer and custom session lengths.
OUR APPROACH
Breaking it all down
After taking a closer look at our initial problem, I took the lead in identifying our research goals. Upon evaluation, I was able to break it into three main parts:
OUR 3 RESEARCH LENSES
Breaking down the HMW allowed me to adequately address each of our research questions thoroughly through research, and ensure that our methods, questions, and analyses were performed with intent.
METHODS
Conducting research to understand our audience and AI
I outlined which methods we should use to achieve our research goals. Here are some of the methods we used:
With the help of my team, I organized all of our notes and insights across our four research methods into an affinity map with two main sections: one focused on learning behaviors and challenges, and another on potential features.
WHAT WE FOUND
Students are struggling to start, so they turn to AI.
College students are often overwhelmed by their coursework, extracurricular activities, and personal commitments. Though they intend to be involved and present in their classes and organizing their notes, it often turns into a time-consuming task that detracts from study time before final exams.
Provide clarity
Students manage overload best through clear structure and small, focused tasks.
Celebrate small wins
Students stay motivated by clear progress tracking and simple, social rewards.
Be a tutor, not an answer key
Students value AI that adapts to their weaknesses and offers tailored explanations.
REFRAMING OUR IDEAS
After conducting our user research, we realized that our initial assumptions about gamification may be more nuanced than we anticipated.
Rather than overhauling Learn with a gamified experience, we decided to focus on creating brief, delightful moments.
We reframed the problem from “How do we make studying more engaging?” to “How can we help students find where to begin?”
THE PROBLEM
Tools that exist fail to address this bottleneck.
College students are often overwhelmed by their coursework, extracurricular activities, and personal commitments. Though they intend to be involved and present in their classes and organizing their notes, it often turns into a time-consuming task that detracts from study time before final exams.
There is no tool that currently exists to address this pain point. When brainstorming, the question that was at the forefront of our minds was:
What if AI could expedite, or even eliminate the planning process?
This led us to reframe our HMW:
How might we evolve Learn on the web app to create a personalized and accessible learning experience that keeps students motivated and focused?
IDEATION
Exploring how Study Session could live inside Notability Learn
We explored how students could set goals without leaving their current environment.
ENTRY POINT
SESSION SETUP
SOLUTION
Personalize your experience on Notability
Instead of giving every user the same study experience, users can complete a personalization onboarding quiz.
Learn captures a user’s preferred study method so that their recommendations can align with a user’s needs.
Give students a starting point
Study Session uses existing course content and learning progress to recommend what to review, then lets students adjust the plan before beginning.
Or, break down your goals in your own words
Type in any goals, and have AI transform them into actionable goals based on your study materials.
Study distractionless
Study Session minimizes into a small, customizable widget in your sidebar. Focus on reviewing your notes without an
Why a simple timer?
We decided to keep the timer’s interface simple to avoid turning Notability into a productivity interface. We wanted students to stay to study, and not lose any functionality.
Making progress visible
Rather than introducing points, currencies, or complex reward loops, we used brief completion moments to reinforce progress at natural stopping points.
TAKEAWAYS
Challenge assumptions!
We began with a broad brief centered around AI, personalization, and gamification, but our research revealed that students didn’t necessarily need more ways to stay engaged—they needed less friction getting started. This taught me to treat a brief as a starting point and use research to uncover the problem actually worth solving.
Research is most valuable when it changes the outcome.
Rather than treating our findings as a separate deliverable, I learned to carry them through the design process—from replacing heavier gamification with lightweight progress cues to using AI to reduce planning without taking control away from students. The project pushed me to connect each interaction back to a real user need.
TEAM NOTABILITYYYY YAY! #NOTEOURABILITY