Creating engaging study tools to help students study smarter, not harder.
Project Overview
Quizlet as been a go-to study tool for millions of students, yet many still struggle to stay motivated and understand their learning progress. Our team explored how Quizlet could evolve from a flashcard tool into a personalized and engaging study system. Through research with college students, we designed new features that provide adaptive AI study guidance, clearer progress insights, and collaborative learning experiences to help students stay engaged.
As part of my first project in IN4MATX 131: Intro in HCI, we were tasked to redesign an existing platform, to improve usability and overall experience. I was responsible for contributing to user research and translating concepts into high-fi prototypes of the AI-adapted test experience and multiplayer study features. After the project concluded, I continued refining these features to further improve the experience.
Duration
Role
User Researcher
UI Designer
Oct 2024 - Dec 2024
Tools & Skills
Figma, FigJam, User research, User testing, Visual design, Prototyping
The Crew
Project Manager: Varuni Agrawal
Recruiter: Ben Fan
User researcher: Ivy Lee, Sabrina Park
THE PROBLEM
Studying tools exist, but motivation, personalization, and structure are missing.
Many students rely on Quizlet to memorize information, yet they often struggle to stay motivated, track their progress, and know what to study next. Students told us that studying often feels repetitive, isolating, and unclear in terms of progress.
Problem Statement
How might we support college students who feel unmotivated, overwhelmed, or prone to procrastination by creating a more personalized study experience that keeps them focused, guided, and engaged?.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
Finding where studying breaks down for students
Competitive Analysis
I conducted a competitive analysis of 5 different study platforms: Anki, Duolingo, Forest, Knowt, StudyKit
User Interviews
We conducted 6 user interviews on health related students to understand their study habits and Quizlet’s pain points.
Survey
We gathered qualitative insights from 9 UCI students on their study habits and experience with Quizlet
Most platforms support studying, not learning.
Most tools emphasize memorization, streaks, and basic progress tracking, but fall short in helping students understand how to improve. Personalized guidance is limited, feedback lacks depth, and collaborative learning is largely missing, leaving students to figure out effective study strategies on their own.
What we learned: students need more guidance, feedback, and motivation when studying.
Many students struggle to stay focused during long study sessions, often falling into procrastination or losing motivation.
01
Many students prefer studying with others because it increases engagement and retention,
02
Quizlet doesn’t adapt to students’ learning needs. Students receive little guidance about what concepts they struggle with, what to review next, and how they are improving.
03
Features like Test, Match, and Q Chat were rarely used among studentsbecause they don’t fully support how students prefer to study.
04
“
“I wish that I could see what concepts I need to study. I think Quizlet struggles to come up with good test questions and detailed feedback so I don’t know how I should study.
- Interview Participant
“Compared to the time spending [on flashcards], it does not let me know which part I’m struggling on.”
- Survey Respondent
“I usually study alone, but I like to study with others because I find that I retain information better when I get tested by friends…”
-Interview Participant
Bringing our insights to life through Ashley.
Meet Ashley, a pre-med student balancing heavy coursework, long study sessions, and the pressure to keep up. While she enjoys studying with peers, she often struggles to stay motivated when studying alone and understanding which concepts she should focus on.
Designing with Ashley in mind helped our team prioritize features that support guidance, motivation, and collaborative studying.
"
The more we spoke with students, the clearer it became that Quizlet wasn’t meeting the way students actually want to study. Students need a learning experience that adapts to them, keeps them motivated, and helps them progress with confidence.
EVALUATING THE PLATFORM
Before we started designing, I conducted a heuristic evaluation of Quizlet’s current experience against Nielson’s 10 Usability Heuristics.
Test Mode: Limited progress visibility & lack of error prevention
The small progress bar & no visibility over questions makes it difficult for students to track their progress
Exit has no confirmation, sending users back to the home page and risking lost progress
Test Mode: Weak feedback after testing
Lack of actionable recommendations, leaving students unsure where to focus on next
Feedback lacks depth and guidance for students, making it difficult for students to find areas to improve
Test Mode: weak feedback post-testing
Incorrect answers aren’t explained, preventing students from understanding their mistakes
Test questions reuse flashcards instead of creating new prompts, making studying feel repetitive
Progress tracking only shows completion, offering no insights into strengths or weak areas
COMING UP WITH SOLUTIONS
Identifying design opportunities from students like Ashley
Insights from our research and heuristic evaluation highlighted several key opportunities to improve Quizlet's learning experience. Students like Ashley often struggle to stay motivated during long study sessions and have difficulty understanding which concepts they should focus on.
Provide personalized guidance so students know what to focus on next
Make learning progress more visible and actionable through clearer feedback and performance insights
Support focus, retention, and reduce procrastination during long study sessions
Enable a collaborative learning experience so students can stay motivated by learning with their peers
Mapping the study experience for our proposed solutions.
To translate these opportunities into concrete features, I created user flows for the key interactions in the redesigned platform:
Adaptive AI Test Mode: Provides personalized questions and actionable feedback to help students study more effectively
Multiplayer Study Game: Study with friends through real-time competition to learn concepts in-depth
Progress Tracking: Clear visuals and insights to help students understand their strengths, weaknesses, and overall learning process
Task flows for progress tracking and test modes.
DESIGNING A SOLUTION
Designing a solution to support motivation, guidance, and collaborative learning.
Guided by our research and task flows, we began exploring how Quizlet’s study experience could better support students. To test these ideas, we created early wireframes to map out how features like the AI-powered test mode, progress tracking, multiplayer studying, Pomodoro timer sessions, and mind mapping.
I focused on designing the adaptive test experience and the multiplayer quiz flow, translating our concepts into low-fidelity wireframes to explore interactions and prepare the designs for user testing.
Low-fidelity sketches of multiplayer features, test mode, progress tracking, mind mapping
My design idea: redesigning Quizlet’s test mode for AI-adaptation and collaborative studying.
Many students told us they learn better when studying with peers. To support this, I designed an additional multiplayer mode to Quizlet’s Test mode, called Test with Friends, allowing students to test each other in real-time, creating a more engaging study experience.
Test with Friends — Making studying more engaging and collaborative
Mid-fi designs for multiplayer study mode
Hi-fi designs for test mode: Test with Friends
Test Mode AI-powered Progress & Insights — Giving students control over what to study
I redesigned Quizlet’s original test mode into an AI-powered experience that allows students to regenerate test questions, view progress, and receive actionable feedback after each test. This helps students like Ashley identify weak concepts and focus their study time more effectively.
Mid-fi designs for AI-adaptive test mode
Hi-fi designs for AI-integrated test mode
TESTING OUR SOLUTION
Validating the study experience through think-aloud usability tests with 4 students.
I tested our first prototype with several students to see whether the redesigned learning experience felt intuitive, motivating, and easy to navigate. Students were asked to complete several key tasks: generating and taking a test, reviewing progress insights, joining a multiplayer game, starting a pomodoro timer, and using the mind map feature.
Key testing insights: multiplayer mode lacked visibility and control and AI feedback was difficult to scan for participants
While students responded positively to the new study features, several usability issues emerged that informed the next iteration of design. Most participants struggled to locate the multiplayer test mode and found the flow confusing once they entered the experience, with several users unsure how to leave the game due to no error prevention mechanism. Additionally, several participants found the AI feedback difficult to scan and identify areas of improvement.
-
![]()
Problem: Test with Friends was difficult to find and to navigate
Feature was originally integrated with Test mode and named “Test with Friends”. The original prototype missed essential interaction steps which disrupted the flow, making the game feel incomplete for participants.
-
![]()
Solution: Test with Friends → Quiz Battle
I improved multiplayer discoverability by moving Test With Friends to the home page and renaming it to Quiz Battle, in addition to redesigning the flow to simulate a full round of the game and adding clearer exit controls.
-
![]()
Problem: AI recommendations were hard to read
AI recommendations were lengthy and visually dense, increasing cognitive load and making it difficult for students to identify key study insights at a glance.
-
![]()
Solution: give users an immediate overview of what to focus on
I introduced progressive disclosure, showing the top 3 insights by default and placing additional feedback behind an expandable dropdown to make recommendations easier to scan.
Click on the laptop to interact!
The final redesign reflects a user-centered design approach to help students study more efficiently, through adaptive AI, and engaging tools. Guided by research and usability testing during my first course project, I'm incredibly proud to have transformed initial ideas into a fully interactive Quizlet prototype, while learning the core design skills and principles for the first time!
Test Your Knowledge Against Friends With Quiz Battle
Compete with friends in a fun, multiplayer quiz experience designed to reinforce material through asking questions and active recall.
Try it yourself!
Adaptive questions and actionable insights show you exactly what to focus on next
Smarter Testing With Adaptive AI and Personalized Feedback
Topic-based insights, study time, and trends make learning feel measurable and motivating.
See Your Progress Clearly and Know Exactly Where to Improve
Final Prototype
Reflecting on the Process
What I learned from this experience!
Gained real exposure to design and usability principles, building my first fully interactive prototype for my first website and redesign project!
Applied the Design Thinking process and learned the value of research, testing, and iteration.
Went beyond the original course scope by revisiting the project independently to strengthen my designs through additional research, refining designs, and iterating on prototypes.
Gained confidence in my ability to navigate the full design process on my own, from identifying pain points to prototyping improved experience