Curie
About
Curie was an AI-powered writing assistant specifically designed for academic and scholarly writing. The product was developed for Springer Nature, offering both B2C and B2B offerings, with a focus on addressing the unique challenges faced by authors and publishers in academic writing.
Role
Product Design Lead
Jan 2023 - Jun 2024 (1 yr 6 mos)
I led design through the ideation, development, launch, and continuous improvement of the Curie platform. My role involved a combination of strategic planning, hands-on design work, and cross-functional collaboration to ensure the product met user needs and business goals.
Product Highlights
Adapting to changing perceptions of AI
- •Led initiatives to reshape user understanding of AI through transparent design practices and educational content.
- •One initiative was to better communicate how their data was being used and the security of their documents.
Designing AI-driven products that scale globally while maintaining high usability across diverse user groups.
Creating a visual brand
- •Collaborated with marketing on brand strategy, creating logos, colors, typography, and spot illustrations.
- •The brand and illustrations earned awards and were integrated into the design system.
Building award-winning visual identity systems that scale across products.
Following emerging UX patterns in AI
- •Continuously tested AI-driven features with real users to refine their accuracy and usability. We added folders and document type to better link subsequent runs and inform our models.
- •Proactively tracked and used emerging UX patterns around AI to help usability and understanding.
Creating educational content that helped users understand how to maximize the benefits of AI tools like Curie.
Managing multiple modalities
- •Maintained consistency in functionality and messaging across web app and Microsoft Word add-in.
- •Used organized design system and documentation to ensure seamless user experience.
Designing consistent experiences across different platforms and tools.
Optimizing pricing model
- •Migrated to a subscription-based AI pricing model.
- •Growing weekly active users by 150% in 3 months with dynamic, scalable pricing options.
Designing pricing strategies that balance user value with business growth.
Process Highlights
Validating through comprehensive testing
- •Employed comprehensive testing methodologies at various stages of product development to validate and ensure the product met high standards of usability.
- •These included card sorting, tree testing, surveys, concept testing, user interviews, usability testing, A/B testing, analytics reviews, and heuristic evaluations.
How we integrated insights from user research into our product discovery.
Building a design system
- •Created comprehensive Figma component library ensuring consistent design patterns.
- •Used Chakra UI as a starting point and matched frontend components for seamless implementation.
Scaling design consistency through systematic component libraries.
Organizing continuous feedback
- •Established continuous feedback workflows through in-app surveys and user interviews.
- •Tracked perceived ease-of-use and usefulness of core features over time to ensure ongoing improvement.
Creating feedback systems that drive continuous product improvement.
Mapping complex user stories
- •Used detailed user story mapping to foster team communication and alignment.
- •Kept users at the core of engineering tasks throughout development.
Using story mapping to align cross-functional teams around user needs.