Team
Cora Hughey, Kelley McTyer, Jack Myers, Jeff Priso, Anderson Tsan
Timeline
Aug 2023 - Dec 2023
CorpusKey
How AI redefines the course creation process,
reducing effort & saving time for instructors
What is CorpusKey?
CorpusKey is an AI-powered platform designed to help instructors efficiently create and customize course materials. The platform allows instructors to upload their resources—like readings, slide decks, or quizzes—and use NLP (natural language processing) to personalize content to their unique course needs.
By simplifying the course creation process, CorpusKey saves time and reduces the effort required for instructors, making it easier to stay current in fast-changing fields or when adding non-traditional topics to the curriculum.
Challenge
As a startup company, CorpusKey only has the functional backend system for course material creation and uses Excel spreadsheet and File Explorer for inputs. Without an interface, there is no way for users to interact with the technology.
Goal
Our team is tasked to design an intuitive, front-end experience that could harness the power of CorpusKey’s backend, making it accessible and useful for instructors of different tech-skill levels.
How do instructors create a course?
With instructors as our primary user group, we collaborated with instructors to understand their workflow of creating/preparing for a course through interview, as well as identifying their needs and pain points throughout the process.
Current Practice
-
craft Syllabus from scratch for a new course
-
finds relevant sources (books, videos, etc.)
-
create slides and videos for one or more courses
-
manually create quizzes
Pain Points
-
time consuming to find relevant sources for class online
-
repetitive in creating multiple slide decks or videos for every class
Mapping the Journey
After gaining insights from interviews, our team was able to come up with an end-to-end user flow to see how instructor needs align with CorpusKey's functions and features.
Initial User Flow
Essentially, there are four critical steps to create a course material.
-
Upload Files - instructors upload any relevant files related to the course to feed into the AI (the AI pulls sources from the uploaded files)
-
Input Outline - instructors manually input prompts/learning objectives to guide the AI to create tailored content
-
Choose Generation File Type - option to create readings, PowerPoint slides, or questions
-
Download Final Output File
End-to-End User Flow of CorpusKey's Content Creation Process
Additionally, we created two simple experience maps based on two scenarios, in order to identify pain points within the preliminary experience we envisioned and to locate opportunities that we can design for in the later ideation/design phase.
From Spreadsheet to Streamlined Interface
Sketches and Low-Fi Designs
In order to translate the backend-heavy platform that is structured around spreadsheets, we started off by sketching out the core features and flows. The focus is on laying out the primary tasks — uploading materials, creating outlines, and generating content.
We generated multiple iterations of our sketches, then we created low-fidelity wireframes to better visualize our interpretation of how the interface would look and to test our ideas with users.
Final Implementation and Designs
In the final design phase, we applied a mini design system to create a high-fidelity, interactive prototype.
The interface was designed to guide instructors through each step of the course creation process, from uploading files to generating book/slide decks/quizzes, with clear progress indicators.
We integrated user feedback by incorporating designs that make users feel familiar with the interface, using elements like dashboards, file upload managers, and progress indicators that mirror tools or other platforms instructors already use. This helped minimize the learning curve while ensuring the platform remained efficient and intuitive.
Before and After: CorpusKey's original Excel spreadsheet input VS streamlined interface
Final Thoughts
This was a wonderful experience working for a startup company, helping to lay its first stepping stones. I want to thank our sponsor John Burr for providing this opportunity, as well as our entire team for this semester's work.
This project was mainly about visualizing and presenting the back-end functions into a front-end design. I was involved in all of the activities our team conducted, whether it is comparative analysis and interview in the research stage or ideating and sketching in the design stage. I particularly enjoyed translating our ideas down with sketches and Figma prototypes, and it was a great honor for me to have the logo I designed selected by our sponsor as the official branding for the project.