WriteLab
About WriteLab
AI-Powered Writing
WriteLab used AI to go beyond grammar checks to critique writing. Between Dec 2013 and May 2018, I helped grow the company from a concept to a $15 Million company that was integrated in over 200 universities and institutions.
My Role
Over the course of 4 years, I led the design for product, brand and marketing efforts for all of Writelab’s touch points. I worked with Writelab’s dev team, as well as the Chief of Product and CEO.
Problem
Students wait until the last minute to write an essay, then turn it in. Instructors use most of their time grading low-level errors, instead of substantial arguments and content. This is a classic pain point of countless writing instructors that drove WriteLab into existence.
Iterations
Throughout the life of the company, I went through nearly a dozen design iterations for the core UX and UI of the product.
Process
Since generating immediate feedback in real-time was WriteLab’s unique selling proposition, we built the software with the writing process in mind, and gave users an environment to revise and polish their writing through multiple drafts, and ultimately share it to be read.
While we focused on the success of the student writer, we wanted to focus equal attention on the instructor. We gave the platform features that helped instructors assign work, respond to student writing, and review student progress through actionable analytics. The goal was to make an all-in-one writing tool.
We launched our first MVP of the software 6 months after pitching the idea to investors, and iterated for the next 3 years until the company was acquired in May 2018.
Challenges
Building a product that provided value to teachers and students, as well as users outside of the academic environment.
Designing UX for an immediate feedback loop, that layered 7 writing functions in an approachable interface.
Training the ML model with thousands of student essays, and setting metrics of successful writing.
Attracting colleges and universities to use the software in their classrooms.
Results
WriteLab acquired by Chegg in early 2018 for $15 Million.
Registered users at the time of acquisition: 30,000
Colleges and universities that used Writelab in their curriculum at time of acquisition: 200
Immediate Feedback
Designed and build as a platform that handles low-level edits so that writing instructors can focus on high-level discussion, WriteLab used natural language processing, machine learning, data mining, and input from users to programmatically generate responses into writing feedback.
Simple Navigation
Across the WriteLab product, sub-navigation exists for page-level functionality. Seen below are side panel sub-navigation views for Settings, My Documents and Analytics.
WriteLab Styling
WriteLab was thoughtfully designed for the academic user base. For colors — blue was chosen to symbolize confidence, intelligence and trust; black was chosen to evoke power and elegance, and white was chosen to symbolize cleanliness and a new beginning. The icons were created for scalability and the typefaces were chosen based for readability.
Tutorial Iconography
Below is an iconographic system that was used as wayfinding in the How it Works and Guide materials, which was used by new students and instructors that onboarded into the product.
Credits
Matthew Ramirez - CEO, Co-Founder Don McQuade - Co-Founder William Hausle - Chief of Product Chris Ramirez - Founding Designer Goni Dubnov- Software Engineer Hunan Rostomyan - Software Engineer Eric Wang - Software Engineer Araceli Salcedo - Software Engineer