Addie emerged from recognizing a critical gap in college counseling—rising application volumes, overwhelmed counselors, and students lacking personalized guidance. I led the design of this AI-powered platform that transforms how students and counselors navigate the college application process.
Note: This project is under NDA. While I can share the overall approach and outcomes, detailed design decisions, user research findings, and technical implementation details are confidential. Reach out for a deeper discussion about the project.
The Challenge
Overwhelmed Systems, Underserved Students
College counseling faces a perfect storm: applications have increased 40% in the past decade while counselor-to-student ratios remain at 1:400. Students need personalized guidance, but counselors lack time for meaningful one-on-one support.
The Solution
We built Addie — an AI assistant that helps students tell their stories and gives counselors more time to guide.
Addie transforms college counseling through dynamic student profiling via "The Ledger" that synthesizes academic and behavioral data. The platform enables personalized narrative crafting that helps students articulate their unique stories, while smart school matching uses our proprietary Thrive Index algorithm. The conversational AI provides 24/7 support through natural interactions, creating a comprehensive support system for both students and counselors.
My Role
Leading Design Across the Platform
As the lead designer, I was responsible for interaction design across both student and counselor experiences. I developed the visual design system and created a comprehensive component library. My work included high-impact feature design from concept to implementation, while maintaining close cross-functional collaboration with engineering and product teams throughout the development process.
Student Experience
Designing for approachability and trust
I created a welcoming, step-by-step onboarding introduction that reduces anxiety around college planning. The design prioritizes clarity and warmth, helping students feel supported from their first interaction with the platform.
The heart of Addie is its omnichannel conversational AI interface that seamlessly integrates web, SMS, and phone interactions. I designed an interface that feels natural and supportive, encouraging students to share their authentic stories while Addie extracts smart insights to build comprehensive profiles. The system automatically generates conversation summaries and key takeaways, maintaining context across all communication channels while balancing being informative and approachable.
I designed a dynamic to-do component with contextual states that intelligently adapts to each student's progress and priorities. The dashboard serves as students' central hub, balancing information density with approachability through personalized greetings, smart progress tracking, and seamless access to conversations with Addie.
Counselor Experience
Empowering educators with actionable insights
I designed a comprehensive prompt management system that allows counselors to create, organize, and deploy conversation starters efficiently. This tool helps counselors maintain consistency while personalizing interactions, giving them the flexibility to adapt their approach based on individual student needs.
Impact & Results
Measurable Outcomes
Our platform successfully engaged 120+ students across 5 pilot schools during the initial rollout phase.
Internal testing revealed a 3.2/4 usability score, demonstrating strong user acceptance and interface effectiveness.
The product traction helped secure $250K in seed funding, validating the market need and our solution approach.
Key Learnings
Designing for AI-Human Collaboration
This project taught me to think in flows, building a comprehensive design system with reusable components that scaled across user types. I focused on optimizing for efficiency through contextual shortcuts and smart defaults, while ensuring every interface element had logical reasoning behind its placement and function.
Special thanks to my PM Vijay, whose mentorship was invaluable in bridging design and business strategy, shaping my approach to creating user-centered yet commercially viable solutions.
Some details are confidential due to NDA requirements. I'd love to walk you through my design process, rapid iteration methods with AI tools, and the unique design challenges we tackled during a private discussion.
Let’s chat.