Short-Form Writing Creator + Analyzer
An integration of AI features that help instructors enhance their prompts when creating assessments and grade student responses in a streamlined way.
Work Type: Openfield Work Summer + Fall 2025 | UI/UX
Applications: Figma
Project Summary
Problem
Instructors often spend too much time drafting up a prompt for their assessment. When they do finalize their prompt for their assessment, they find grading each student response tedious and slow.
Process
As 1 of 2 designers on this project, our process includes:
Sketching out multiple design concepts during ideation
Meeting weekly with the Macmillan product team to gather feedback on early-stage designs, informing iterations later on
Multiple rounds of design iterations with feedback from internal and client teams
Prototyping final wireframes for validation testing
Impact
Both the prompt creator and student response analyzer tools are out publicly in the Achieve courseware, having gone through validation testing. Instructors have found that the tools streamline their grading process in large classes and create meaningful assessments quickly.
Intro
Problem
Instructors Spend Too Much Time Drafting Their Assessment Prompt and Grading Hundreds of Student Responses
Achieve instructors teach multiple classes with 100+ students. They don’t have a lot of time creating assessment prompts and grading their students’ short-form writing responses. They spend a long time assessing whether or not students meet the assessment rubric criteria.
Solution
Implement Tools That Streamline the Assessment Prompt Creation and Grading Process
Macmillan specifically wanted to implement AI tools that help instructors write and refine their assessment prompts and analyze student responses to speed up the grading process. These tools are optional but when enabled help instructors quickly create their prompts with confidence and grade efficiently.
The Macmillan Learning Team
Product Manager
Developer and Team Lead
Developer
My Responsibilities
Sketched lo-fi design and evolved them through multiple rounds of design iterations
Aligned with the Macmillan team weekly to gather feedback and set soft and hard deadlines to stay on track
Upgraded medium-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity designs, using Macmillan’s new brand identity
Finalized wireframes and prototyped designs in Figma for hand-off to the client team for validation testing
Planning
Assessing the Current Achieve Screens
We looked at the current Achieve assessment creation and student responses screens to see where we could implement the AI tools.
For the prompt creator, the tool should be visually connected to the Question Prompt field, because that’s the section instructors create their prompts. We were inspired by AI writing tools like Gmail’s email writer and Gemini and how their tools aren’t flashy or overwhelming to interact with. For the analyzer tool assessing student responses, the tool should be implemented where the student responses are, or can even be its own column within the student response list.
Prompt Creator Ideation + Refinement
Early Exploration
We began this project with the prompt creator, since that’s what instructors would interact with first when creating a short-form writing assessment for students. Having been inspired by Gemini and Gmail’s AI writing tools as mentioned above, we experimented with a box or section where instructors can type in their prompt idea to generate ideas. At first, we thought of having criteria to fill out, such as complexity or prompt length but figured that would just add more time and effort to the instructor, who needs to move fairly quickly.
Analyzer Exploration
While we sketched prompt creators, we were also sketching what the analyzer tool would look like within the student responses view. We experimented with adding an extra “Criteria Items” column, and while we found the idea exciting, we found that horizontally scrolling is not very user-friendly.
End Concepts
Final Designs: Prompt Creator
We utilized the new Macmillan Learning’s branding and styling, and applied it to our final wireframes. The Macmillan team was really happy with how the redesigned page turned out, especially with how all the content is displayed and organized. The new colors also make the page feel more modern. The site can be navigated via keyboard, and all images have alt text. All text is readable and the colors pass accessibility.
Impact
Resolved main usability issue of drop-offs and low traffic by eliminating long page scrolls and word count by ~70%
Organized content into their own subpages to help reduce information overload
Emphasized user stories, guiding students and instructors to pages that are relevant to them
Implemented the new Macmillan branding, evoking a modern and vibrant feeling
Takeaways
We worked on redesigning the accessibility page user experience on desktop; mobile view is currently being refined.
In the planning phase of this project, I found that laying out the Jobs to Be Done is especially important in knowing why we were designing the way we were. User experience considerations like low friction and good visual hierarchy are important in addressing our audience’s needs.