Whether it’s a group test or research assignment, she feels things would be faster if she worked alone. Goodnotes — a digital note-taking platform for writing, organizing, and annotating by hand — recognized this as a widespread barrier in education.
As AI reshapes EdTech, Goodnotes partnered with Invention Corps at UC Berkeley to explore new collaboration features. Our team ideated solutions that ultimately won 1st place at the designathon.
Design Question
After thorough user interviews and competitor analysis of 4 other sites, I identified 3 major pain points that hindered the user experience.
01
Unbalanced Group Work
Unclear responsibilities and weak communication led to distrust among teammates.
02
Lack of Visual Brainstorming Tools
No visible contribution tracking; collaboration often became asynchronous and disconnected.
03
Unproductive In-person Collaboration
Students and teachers felt socially distanced, with little incentive for meaningful discussion.
At the end of the day,
Sophia wants confidence in group work.
From our research findings, we came to 3 design goals.
Prioritize Fun and Creativity
Engaging activities encourage intrinsic motivation and collaboration.
As we turned our research findings into tangible solutions, we translated insights into focused feature concepts, drawing inspiration from:
Quizlet’s simple, visually engaging flashcards.
Discord’s accessible voice chat communication.
Google Docs’ live, responsive collaboration.
Feature Brainstorming
Reflecting on our own classroom experiences, we put ourselves in Sophia’s shoes and explored gamification in the form of friendly competition inspired by Kahoot! and Quizlet Live, blending playfulness with deeper peer engagement. We made sure to include this element in our final design.
Kahoot!
Quizlet Live
Running on a tight schedule with a small group, there were many challenges that came our way. This experience was incredibly rewarding for me, as I certainly feel more comfortable designing under pressure.
Takeaway #1
Let Ideas Flow
Especially with such little time, we threw out as many ideas as we could during ideation to take the ones that stuck.
Takeaway #2
Take Inspiration from Others
Have a firm grasp as to why certain features, layouts, and aesthetics work for similar products.
Takeaway #3
Be Fast Yet Decisive
It was crucial for us to not only make design choices quickly but confidently, then commit to them.
There were many ideas that we had talked about as a team that, due to time restraints and lack of development, did not make it onto the prototype. In the future, it would be helpful to map out every page and feature before building, as these ideas were not fully fleshed out by the time it came to execute them.
I am incredibly proud of my teammates, Katie Wang and Vivian Xie, for the tremendous effort and diligence they demonstrated throughout the whole competition, and winning 1st place was definitely a huge feat for all of us! I can only hope that Sophia is as satisfied with Study Space as we are.
