Watch the Product Demo: See how Research AI transforms academic workflows in action.
What I learned... 💭
Designing Research AI taught me how crucial mobile experience are in academic tools. Testing reminded me that even a tiny button like “More Insights” can make or break a core feature. By iterating on real user feedback and emphasising micro-learning, I helped build a smarter, lighter way to digest research on the go.
Discover Stage
The Problem
Students, especially those in university juggling tight schedules struggle to stay up to date with the latest research. Existing academic tools are dense, slow, and unfriendly to mobile workflows. They need a smarter, mobile-friendly solution that summarises, translates, and organises research seamlessly.
Define Stage
Personas Identified
Creating a persona helped us distill the diverse needs of our audience into relatable, design-focused profiles.
Deliver Stage
Final Product
These refinements improved user navigation, increased trust in AI outputs, and aligned the design more closely with user expectations.
Develop Stage
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Once we finalised the IA and user flows after iterations, we started with wireframes.
We tested Lo-Fi wireframes with users to find out the initial problems before moving to high fidelity wireframes.
Secondary Research
Our secondary research included a literature review on digital learning habits and a competitor analysis of platforms like Academia, and R Discovery to see what market currently offers.
Primary Research
We conducted surveys with masters students to explore pain points in existing research tools and interviewed professors and PhD students to gain expert perspectives on academic workflows and the potential integration of AI-powered research tools.
Takeaways from literature review
Early-career researchers and students often lack training in how to search, read, and synthesise research, leading to frustration and reduced engagement with research (Poojary & Bagadia, 2014)
Students spend 2–3 hours daily on social media, which negatively impacts academic performance but shows potential for engaging formats (Talaue et al., 2018).
Micro-learning can improve retention and motivation, with one study showing an 18% increase in student scores using short-form learning content (Mohammed et al., 2018)
Platforms that combine micro-learning and mobile-first design can align with students’ real-world study habits, reducing cognitive load and increasing learning flexibility (Kossen & Ooi, 2021)
Insights
Academic language is too complex, making papers hard to understand.
Tools rarely offer summaries, forcing users to read full papers for key points.
Disorganized note-taking and citation management
There's a lack of personalized updates or smart recommendations.
Wasting time sorting through irrelevant papers.
To find the particular information users need to read full and find answers themselves
Language barrier to read research papers.
Age: 30 years
Occupation: Masters student
Location: London, UK
Maria is a final-year master's student juggling coursework, research, and PhD applications. Staying current in her field matters to her, though she finds it hard to keep up with long academic readings.
“ I want a faster way to browse and read summaries of research papers so I can quickly tell if they're relevant, save them to read later and stay updated on the latest UX research. “
Maria Gonzales
Find a faster way to browse and manage research papers.
Stay updated on UX research trends despite her busy schedule.
Streamline note-taking and literature organization.
Goals
Struggles to filter through long research papers efficiently.
Finds it hard to organize notes and reference materials.
Wants to quickly assess paper relevance before committing to reading.
Pain Points
How might we ...
We defined multiple problem statements
How might we surface the findings of a research paper instantly?
How might we make research papers more digestible without compromising academic accuracy?
How might we build trust by showing clear links between summaries and original sources?
How might we support microlearning while preserving the context and credibility of the full paper?
How might we reimagine the traditional academic format to better align with how users consume content?
Onboarding Screens
Allows user pick topics they’re interested in, so content feels personalised right from the start.
Home Screens and Explore screen
Shows research paper summaries and different options for users to explore research papers
Home
Explore
Web Mode
Library
You
Web Mode
Scan QR Code
Want ResearchAi on your computer?
Open web.researchAi.com, scan the code, and start exploring!
What we learned in Lo-fi testing?
Users did not liked the text heavy summarise on home page without any visuals
Then comes
Our Aha! moment . . .
We went back to our literature review (focused on micro-learing) and iterated on home screen and came up with high fidelity UI screens in social media style and again conducted the user testing.
Brain teaser
🤔 Not quite!
Breathing exercises are a proven way to reduce stress and anxiety.
No worries! There’s more to discover ahead.
3/3
Brain teaser
Yes, you’re right!
Breathing exercises are a proven way to reduce stress and anxiety.
Great job! Keep exploring for more insights.
2/3
Brain teaser
Can 5 min breathing exercises help to reduce stress and anxiety?
Yes
1/3
Usability testing with High fidelity prototype
We tested the high fidelity prototype with 8 participants. Usability testing highlighted both strengths and improvement areas. Users appreciated key features like AI-generated summaries, Translations and Listen mode, Save to library and Chat with AI.
Users felt the “More Insights” button resembled an ad, reducing engagement.
Users also requested better AI transparency specifically, if they find differences in summary and research paper so provided any option to report such summaries.
Key Features
Usability testing confirmed that below key features enhance accessibility and foster curiosity, allowing users to explore academic content in manageable, time-efficient segments solidifying microlearning as a central outcome of the design.
Research AI - Academic Discovery
using Microlearning
Simplifying research through AI summaries, filters, and mobile-friendly micro-learning.
Role
User Interface Design, User Experience Design
Team
Maysan, Joelson, Kriti, Sanjana, Mihran
Duration
4 Months
Portfolio by AARTI SAPKAL
UX UI Designer