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About
Resume
Role
UX Designer
Team
Myself
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Timeline
Sept - Dec 2024
MiMaizey
Using AI to enhance personalized student support, accessibility, and engagement with class materials, campus resources, and student life at U-M.
What is MiMaizey?
Currently, the University of Michigan (U-M) offers three AI assistants as part of U-M's broader efforts to explore AI’s role in higher education:
MiMaizey is uniquely tailored for the U-M student community, offering quick and personalized access to essential university resources. MiMaizey provides students with information about dining hall menus, course materials, student organizations, transportation, and Canvas-related inquiries. It integrates with various existing U-M services to support tasks such as navigating campus, finding academic resources, and staying informed about university events.
More on U-M ITS AI Services can be found here.
U-M GPT
U-M Maizey
MiMaizey
OVERVIEW
September
October
November
December
PHASE 3:
Develop
PHASE 4:
Deliver
PHASE 2:
Define
PHASE 1:
Discover
BACKGROUND
This redesign was part of a course project in SI 307: Introduction to User Experience Design. Students partnered with U-M Information and Technology Services (ITS) to improve the university’s AI-driven tools. The project aligns with the U-M School of Information’s 2024-2025 theme, Future of Work, focusing on the intersection of technology and society in the rapidly evolving landscape of the modern workplace. Through generative AI tools, U-M aims to explore how AI can enhance productivity and accessibility for students, faculty, and staff.
A general timeline of this project consisted of:
DISCOVER
To identify pain points and user challenges, I conducted 5 user interviews with University of Michigan students. Through informal conversations and structured usability testing, I explored how students interacted with MiMaizey and U-M’s broader generative AI tools, focusing on ease of use, clarity of responses, integration with existing U-M services, and overall viability and impact on a student’s daily life.
Key highlights include:
“To be honest I don’t really understand what each site is used for — I feel like that kind of deters me and I just end up using ChatGPT because it’s the most convenient.”
“It just feels really outdated and difficult to use — it feels kind of static-y and doesn’t really flow all together.”
“I ended up just comparing it to other AI [tools]. I expected it to remember my previous question, but it didn’t and that made the conversation feel disconnected.”
“It doesn’t really feel personalized so I don’t think I’d voluntarily use it. Everything I search I could just use Google.”
DEFINE
MiMaizey, along with U-M’s AI assistant ecosystem, lacks cohesion and clarity in the user experience for University of Michigan students accessing generative AI available on campus.
FRAGMENTED USER JOURNEY
U-M’s generative AI tools are hosted on 3 separate platforms with similar titles (U-M GPT, U-M Maizey, MiMaizey) with minimal cross-functionality, making navigation and differentiating between the tools confusing.
UNINTUITIVE INTERFACES
The UI’s inefficient use of space, and static, non-fluid animations make interactions feel rigid, mechanical, and unintuitive, leading to challenges navigating tools and maximizing their functionality.
LACK OF ONBOARDING & CONTEXT
Without a landing page or clear instructions, users struggled to understand the tools' capabilities and what set them apart from other AI tools like ChatGPT, leading to bias and low adoption.
In other words: How can we create an easy-to-use student-centered AI experience that students will voluntarily use because it is understandable, convenient, and feels uniquely tailored to U-M?
How might we design a seamless and intuitive AI assistant that enhances student life at U-M, making it easy to access personalized campus resources while clearly differentiating MiMaizey from other AI tools?
SETTING A GOAL
WIREFRAMES
After I completed the wireframes, I quickly realized that my work did not adequately address the problem statement at hand, but was rather a repeated design with different outputs. As a result, I re-evaluated my work, came up with new ideas, asked for feedback and criticism from my course TAs and classmates, and came down to the final design.
DESIGN GUIDE
STREAMLINED USER FLOW
Create an intuitive, cohesive, and easy-to-use user flow that allows students to navigate features effortlessly.
COMPETITIVE CONVENIENCE
Design the go-to AI tool for students through integration with U-M specific resources, setting it apart from other options.
DEVELOP
Defining core principles and goals to consider the needs of students and guide design decisions.
DELIVER
The solution: Streamline the U-M generative AI experience and integrate with existing university systems.
By eliminating the need to switch between platforms and properly integrating with existing U-M systems, we can create a cohesive and convenient experience for students. By selecting what U-M resources to use and access (Wolverine Access, Canvas, Atlas, and umich.edu), students can personalize the tool’s output.
Instead of manually gathering information from multiple sources, users can generate tailored responses, such as degree progress audits, course recommendations, or financial aid summaries, all within a single interface. This integration not only enhances efficiency but also ensures accuracy by pulling real-time data from official U-M systems. Additionally, the tool’s adaptability allows students to refine their search criteria, ensuring outputs align with their specific needs, whether they are planning their schedules, tracking graduation requirements, or seeking university support services.
TAKEAWAYS
With more time, I would have loved to dive deeper into usability testing, iterations and making the project visually cohesive.
MORE ITERATIONS & FEEDBACK
Gathering more feedback on the final design would have helped validate decisions and seek out what could be improved.
LO-FI WIREFRAMES & VISUALS
Flesh out more of my ideas in the lo-fi stage and making the designs more visually cohesive and engaging.
Role
UX Designer
Team
Myself
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Timeline
Sept - Dec 2024
MiMaizey
Using AI to enhance personalized student support, accessibility, and engagement with class materials, campus resources, and student life at U-M.
What is MiMaizey?
Currently, the University of Michigan (U-M) offers three AI assistants as part of U-M's broader efforts to explore AI’s role in higher education:
MiMaizey is uniquely tailored for the U-M student community, offering quick and personalized access to essential university resources. MiMaizey provides students with information about dining hall menus, course materials, student organizations, transportation, and Canvas-related inquiries. It integrates with various existing U-M services to support tasks such as navigating campus, finding academic resources, and staying informed about university events.
More on U-M ITS AI Services can be found here.
U-M GPT
U-M Maizey
MiMaizey
OVERVIEW
September
October
November
December
PHASE 3:
Develop
PHASE 4:
Deliver
PHASE 2:
Define
PHASE 1:
Discover
BACKGROUND
This redesign was part of a course project in SI 307: Introduction to User Experience Design. Students partnered with U-M Information and Technology Services (ITS) to improve the university’s AI-driven tools. The project aligns with the U-M School of Information’s 2024-2025 theme, Future of Work, focusing on the intersection of technology and society in the rapidly evolving landscape of the modern workplace. Through generative AI tools, U-M aims to explore how AI can enhance productivity and accessibility for students, faculty, and staff.
A general timeline of this project consisted of:
DISCOVER
To identify pain points and user challenges, I conducted 5 user interviews with University of Michigan students. Through informal conversations and structured usability testing, I explored how students interacted with MiMaizey and U-M’s broader generative AI tools, focusing on ease of use, clarity of responses, integration with existing U-M services, and overall viability and impact on a student’s daily life.
Key highlights include:
“To be honest I don’t really understand what each site is used for — I feel like that kind of deters me and I just end up using ChatGPT because it’s the most convenient.”
“It just feels really outdated and difficult to use — it feels kind of static-y and doesn’t really flow all together.”
“I ended up just comparing it to other AI [tools]. I expected it to remember my previous question, but it didn’t and that made the conversation feel disconnected.”
“It doesn’t really feel personalized so I don’t think I’d voluntarily use it. Everything I search I could just use Google.”
DEFINE
MiMaizey, along with U-M’s AI assistant ecosystem, lacks cohesion and clarity in the user experience for University of Michigan students accessing generative AI available on campus.
FRAGMENTED USER JOURNEY
U-M’s generative AI tools are hosted on 3 separate platforms with similar titles (U-M GPT, U-M Maizey, MiMaizey) with minimal cross-functionality, making navigation and differentiating between the tools confusing.
UNINTUITIVE INTERFACES
The UI’s inefficient use of space, and static, non-fluid animations make interactions feel rigid, mechanical, and unintuitive, leading to challenges navigating tools and maximizing their functionality.
LACK OF ONBOARDING & CONTEXT
Without a landing page or clear instructions, users struggled to understand the tools' capabilities and what set them apart from other AI tools like ChatGPT, leading to bias and low adoption.
In other words: How can we create an easy-to-use student-centered AI experience that students will voluntarily use because it is understandable, convenient, and feels uniquely tailored to U-M?
How might we design a seamless and intuitive AI assistant that enhances student life at U-M, making it easy to access personalized campus resources while clearly differentiating MiMaizey from other AI tools?
SETTING A GOAL
WIREFRAMES
After I completed the wireframes, I quickly realized that my work did not adequately address the problem statement at hand, but was rather a repeated design with different outputs. As a result, I re-evaluated my work, came up with new ideas, asked for feedback and criticism from my course TAs and classmates, and came down to the final design.
DESIGN GUIDE
STREAMLINED USER FLOW
Create an intuitive, cohesive, and easy-to-use user flow that allows students to navigate features effortlessly.
COMPETITIVE CONVENIENCE
Design the go-to AI tool for students through integration with U-M specific resources, setting it apart from other options.
DEVELOP
Defining core principles and goals to consider the needs of students and guide design decisions.
DELIVER
The solution: Streamline the U-M generative AI experience and integrate with existing university systems.
By eliminating the need to switch between platforms and properly integrating with existing U-M systems, we can create a cohesive and convenient experience for students. By selecting what U-M resources to use and access (Wolverine Access, Canvas, Atlas, and umich.edu), students can personalize the tool’s output.
Instead of manually gathering information from multiple sources, users can generate tailored responses, such as degree progress audits, course recommendations, or financial aid summaries, all within a single interface. This integration not only enhances efficiency but also ensures accuracy by pulling real-time data from official U-M systems. Additionally, the tool’s adaptability allows students to refine their search criteria, ensuring outputs align with their specific needs, whether they are planning their schedules, tracking graduation requirements, or seeking university support services.
TAKEAWAYS
With more time, I would have loved to dive deeper into usability testing, iterations and making the project visually cohesive.
MORE ITERATIONS & FEEDBACK
Gathering more feedback on the final design would have helped validate decisions and seek out what could be improved.
LO-FI WIREFRAMES & VISUALS
Flesh out more of my ideas in the lo-fi stage and making the designs more visually cohesive and engaging.