Enhanced Content Creation with Generative AI
Back in late 2022, I began to hear a lot about OpenAI, ChatGPT, and AI in general. It was interesting to see how ChatGPT and other AI models were becoming easier to use, with companies like Notion incorporating AI features into their products. Exploring AI led me to consider integrating these technologies into Teachable's platform, enhancing our work with a touch of magic. But, there was quite a bit of doubt among the Teachable crew, particularly the learning team (product and design folks), who were worried about things like plagiarism. This led to some interesting discussions and brainstorming sessions to address these concerns.
My Role
Design Manager > Principle Designer
During this period, my role underwent a transition. Initially, I was tasked with overseeing the designers, and later on, I took on the direct design responsibilities.
1. Promoting AI capabilities internally.
2. Developing initial proof of concept to showcase usage and inspire teams.
3. Co-organizing an AI hackathon to drive innovation and experimentation within the tech team, seeking to pinpoint feasible AI projects for Teachable.
4. Ideate, design and ship experiences to assist content creators with content ideation and creation using generative AI.
Is this something that can benefit our users?
Being a knowledge creator involves more than just sharing what you know. It's about deciding what to teach, structuring the content, and adding interactive elements like quizzes to keep it interesting. There's a lot that goes into it! The job map (from previous research) shed light on steps that are involved in getting a course launched.
Jobs to be done mapping
Creating a course for new knowledge creators is like evaluating the platform. It's all about reaching that 'ah-ha' moment when the topic comes to life, marking a significant step forward. Having a well-structured course curriculum is key to experiencing this breakthrough.
From what we've learned, generative AI has the potential to assist both new and experienced creators in generating content. This assistance can ignite fresh ideas, organize their existing thoughts, and expedite the realization of their concepts.
The proof of concept
A functional prototype
Creating a curriculum can be a real challenge for both new and experienced creators. That's where generative AI comes in handy, making it a perfect solution for this common user frustration. Creating a prototype was crucial for demonstrating instead of just explaining in terms of getting buy-in from leadership and creating a buzz within Teachable.
Design
I drew up a basic idea on paper and chatted with my engineering partner about it. We went over what she'd need to do to bring it to life. Since it was just a test, I mainly cared about getting accurate data and putting it in the right format rather than focusing on the design for now. The aim was to add this feature to the current creation process we have.
Impact
Secured leadership support for the launch of our new generative AI feature.
Made it real and calmed the skeptics' fears of AI.
Prioritized the project and launched the MVP.
Exploring additional user needs for generative AI led to the creation of an AI hackathon.
Curriculum Generator - the MVP
My role
Back when I was the Design manager, my main focus wasn't actually designing the MVP experience. Instead, I was there to give feedback and guidance to the designer I was overseeing for the MVP project. As you can see, more polish and fidelity was added to the MVP in this iteration that was rolled out to all users. It's the first AI feature, so we labeled it as 'experimental' to let users know it's something new we're trying out.
Hackathon
Following the AI Curriculum Generator project success, our tech team was keen on using generative AI for more platform features. At that point in time, generative AI was key to our product strategy for competitiveness in the creator economy market.
Hackathon planning doc
My Role
Prior to the hackathon kick-off, I organized a workshop with 60 participants, including senior leaders. The goal was to deepen our grasp and empathy for our users by going through their journey together. After the journey, we brainstormed ideas around user challenges, fostering a collaborative environment to expand on each other's thoughts. These collective ideas formed the foundation for the hackathon event.
Outcome
The entire company participated in the hackathon event. Many cool ideas were brought to life during the event, and some even came to fruition later on. It was a creative and exciting experience for everyone involved and definitely helped build momentum for the company.
Additional projects
Summary Generator
We introduced a new tool called the summary generator to help creators make course content easier to understand. This tool lets creators generate text-based summaries for learners on individual lessons or lessons within a section, making the content more digestible.
Quiz generator
Developing quizzes within a course can be a time-consuming endeavor. I designed a quiz generator that generates multiple-choice questions from a content sections or specific lessons. This involved a complete redesign of the current experience and integration of the AI assistant.
When designing the quiz generator experience, it was critical to also design all of the edge cases. For example, what happens if a user exits the quiz generator before generation is complete, what do they see if they come back? What does a read-only mode look like, etc. These cases were designed and accounted for in user flows diagrams.
Outcome
Business Impact
User impact
“It’s useful because it obviously kind of outlines for me some of the things that maybe my viewers would want to see or might need to know before I even put my stuff in here... Now, there’s a lot of stuff that I forget I didn’t know just because I’ve been doing it for long enough that it’s Fallen by the wayside.”
