Notability
CONTEXT
Notability is an Ed-Tech company focused on creating accessible, comprehensive note-taking and learning tools. They recently launched Learn, an AI feature streamlining studying with smart notes, summaries, transcripts, quizzes, and a chatbot that understands your content.
ROLE
UI Designer,
Research and Prototyping Lead
DURATION
September 2025 - December 2025
(10 weeks)
TEAM
Sophia Clancy
Mikayla Acosta
Grace Zhang
TOOLS
Figma
PROBLEM SPACE
Many students struggle to take effective notes with current tools. One-size-fits-all study apps often leave students with learning differences behind and lack personalization.
THE REALITY
Studying as we know it is changing.
With the emergence of AI, studying is no longer just about retaining information. 90% of students use AI to study, citing reasons, such as:
Understanding Content
Generate practice questions and mock exams for classes with minimal past testing resources
Saving Time
Review content quickly using summaries of readings or lectures
Organizing Notes
Navigate messy syllabi and course content
Note-taking apps like Notability are looking to integrate AI into existing products to unify workflows for students.
INTRODUCING NOTABILITY LEARN
Notability Learn
Learn is Notability's AI study tool aimed at helping students summarize and easily study their note content — it includes smart notes, summaries, live transcripts, quizzes, and even a chatbot for your content!
WE FRAMED OUR GUIDING QUESTION
How might we evolve Learn to create a personalized and accessible learning experience that keeps students motivated and focused?
SOLUTION
Enjoy a personalized Notability experience, tailored to your needs
Profile Personalization shapes Notability Learn around each student through a fast onboarding quiz that collects learning styles, challenges, and language preferences.
All of your study preferences, at your fingertips
Notability learns what works best for you, because every student needs to take the approach that works best for them.
Stay focused with Study Session, an in-app focus mode.
STUDY SESSION COMPONENTS
CORE FLOWS
Have AI suggest which topics need attention, reducing cognitive load
Notability Learn utilizes user data: progression through material, quiz scores, and suggests content to review based on previous user performance, so you can focus on studying, not planning.
Type in any goal, and have AI transform it into an actionable microtasks — just for you.
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.
Be in charge of your own sessions using Focus Goals
Set a pomodoro timer within Notability, and enable an optional "Focus Mode" to turn off potentially distracting notifications from other apps.
RESEARCH
We identified three research goals:
Hone in on learning differences and how digital tools can best support/alleviate pain points.
Analyze current competitor landscape within educational products and AI integration.
Understand what creates an engaging digital learning experience.
OUR CHOSEN RESEARCH METHODS
📖 Secondary Research
Understand our target audience, especially users with learning differences.
👥 Competitor Analysis
Research existing features to improve and identify Notability’s market advantage.
💬 User Interviews
Understand how students with learning differences study and how digital tools can better support their workflow.
📊 User Insights Survey
To gain an overview of broader AI usage trends within a general student population.
🖋 Diary Study
Understand how users use Notability’s Learn feature over a period of time.
📢 Focus Groups
Explore differing student experiences and diverse study workflows, ideate features for their ideal study tool.
After speaking with students from all backgrounds and learning experiences, we zoomed out to look at the bigger picture.
SYNTHESIS
From our synthesis, we drew these three main insights:
Students manage overload best through clear structure and small, focused tasks.
Students stay motivated by clear progress tracking and simple, social rewards.
Students value AI that adapts to their learning styles and weaknesses, offering tailored explanations and formats that enhance understanding without reinforcing biases.
We created three user personas based on different product use cases:
Our persona, Conceptual Cheryl, tackles the case of an international student utilizing AI tools for translation during lectures and studying.
IDEATION
CRAZY 8 IDEATION
Focused feature ideation on exact user pain points
We organized features that students shared in focus groups, as well as brainstormed additions to these features
We used an Impact-Effort Matrix to decide which features to focus on in our final prototype.
We outlined key user flows and created low fidelity sketch explorations, making sure to keep smooth integration with existing Notability features in mind.
COMMUNICATING WITH OUR CLIENT
We prepared a feature proposal to contextualize our solution
Since we had different designers at Notability (with differing levels of familiarity with our project) giving us feedback, we wanted to contextualize our solution.
PROTOTYPING
We quickly iterated from wireframe to an interactive prototype.
TAKEAWAYS
Communication Is Key.
Good UX work doesn’t happen in isolation — it requires alignment across product managers, developers, marketing, and stakeholders.
Not everyone is familiar with research terminology or UX frameworks, so it’s important to translate insights into clear, actionable language.
Contextualizing findings (the “why” behind decisions) builds trust and makes collaboration smoother.
Presenting research in a digestible way increases buy-in and reduces misunderstandings later in the process.
Consistency Builds Trust.
Design systems aren’t just visual guidelines — they create predictability and reduce cognitive load.
Familiar patterns help users feel confident navigating a product.
Consistency across screens, components, and interactions improves usability and makes scaling easier for teams.
Reusing components also speeds up development and keeps collaboration efficient.
Simplicity Creates Better Experiences.
Clear information hierarchy is more effective than visually dense layouts.
Simplifying flows reduces friction and helps users complete tasks faster.
Removing unnecessary elements often improves usability more than adding new features.
However, small, thoughtful animations (microinteractions) can add warmth and personality without overwhelming users.
