Project Overview
Flexi is an AI-powered digital tutor designed for CK-12 Foundation’s educational platform, offering personalized, on-demand academic support for K-12 students. By delivering explanations, adaptive practice, and encouragement, Flexi addresses critical learning gaps, particularly in remote or hybrid classroom settings.
- My Role: Senior Product Designer (User Research, UX/UI Design, Prototyping)
- Timeline: January 2024 – September 2024 (Beta), Public launch Q1 2025
- Team: 1 PM, 3 ML Engineers, 2 Curriculum Specialists, 1 Front-End Developer
Problem & Opportunity
The shift to remote learning revealed significant gaps in personalized student support:
- Only 50% of students could consistently focus during remote lessons, with just 41% feeling motivated (YouthTruth, 2022).
- Teachers experienced burnout from repetitive student queries, averaging 54-hour workweeks, with less than half dedicated to teaching (Education Week, 2022).
- Effective 1:1 tutoring remains prohibitively expensive despite proven efficacy, delivering +0.20 to 0.23 standard deviation improvements in math (NBER, 2022).
Opportunity: Build a scalable AI tutoring tool integrated into existing classroom workflows, offering affordable, trustworthy, always-available learning support.
User Research & Methodology
We employed a variety of rigorous research methodologies to ensure our solutions directly addressed real user needs:
- Student Interviews (Grades 6-11, n=18): Conducted qualitative 1-on-1 video interviews to deeply understand students' emotional responses, frustrations, and expectations when seeking help.
- Teacher Diary Studies (n=12, two-week duration): Teachers documented daily interactions, highlighting repetitive support tasks and workload impacts.
- Competitive Analysis: Systematic assessment of 5 leading AI tutoring products, evaluating usability, transparency, teacher integration, and trustworthiness.
Key findings:
- 67% of students reported frustration without immediate help.
- Teachers spent ~7 hours weekly addressing routine clarifications.
- Competitors lacked transparency, teacher oversight, and trust-building features.
Design & Prototyping
Based on research, we developed a conversational, supportive user interface emphasizing transparency and accessibility:
- Confidence Indicators: Real-time display of AI confidence levels, increasing trust and clarity.
- Interactive Learning Loop: Answer → Micro-quiz → Stretch-prompt, promoting deeper learning and engagement.
- Teacher Dashboard: Real-time analytics highlighting common student misconceptions, streamlining teacher interventions.
Through iterative Figma prototyping and usability testing (n=31), we achieved:
- 22% faster task completion compared to traditional worksheets.
- 92% student satisfaction rate, measured by willingness to use the tool again.
AI Integration & Design Decisions
Strategic AI design choices were grounded in evidence and aligned with user needs:
- Transparency & Trust: Displayed model confidence and source citations, crucial for sustained trust (Meta-review of Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 2023).
- Promoting Metacognition: Implemented "think-aloud" checkboxes, shown to boost engagement and retention during remote learning.
- Teacher Empowerment: Added teacher-controlled toggles (e.g., "Pause Flexi," "Rephrase Response"), reducing teacher workload and enhancing control.
Pilot Results & Impact
Flexi’s pilot launch demonstrated significant improvements across key metrics:
- User Engagement: Weekly active users hit 61% of the target cohort within eight weeks.
- Session Duration: Average session length more than doubled, from 5m 22s to 10m 48s.
- Learning Gains: Accuracy on follow-up tasks improved significantly, rising from 48% to 72% correct responses.
- Teacher Workload: Support requests decreased by 33% per student per term.
Flexi’s initial success projects substantial long-term educational benefits:
- Estimated to save approximately 1.9 teacher-hours per class weekly, equating to nearly $2,400 saved per teacher each semester.
- Achieved an estimated learning improvement of +0.18 standard deviations, comparable to traditional human tutoring at a fraction of the cost.
Post-launch, Flexi recorded over 500,000 student sessions within 90 days, solidifying its value to CK-12’s expansive user base.
Reflection & Future Vision
The Flexi project reinforced critical lessons in designing responsible and effective AI educational tools:
- Successful: Confidence indicators, micro-quizzes, and teacher empowerment controls resonated positively.
- Areas to Improve: Early avatar designs felt overly juvenile to older students; future iterations will embrace a more universally appealing aesthetic.
Looking ahead, we plan to expand Flexi's capabilities:
- Multilingual Support: Broadening global accessibility.
- Adaptive Content: Adjusting complexity based on individual reading levels.
- Enhanced Analytics: Providing district-wide insights through API integrations.
