Crafting next gen interfaces for MIT Media Lab researchers
Product design
Prototyping
AI
Company
MIT Media Lab
Role
Lead product designerConcepted, prototyped, and tested AI-assisted research tools with faculty and students.
Team
Research PI, 2 grad students, 1 engineer.
Impact
- Real-time Context Accelerated research conversations by surfacing relevant context instantly.
- AI Augmentation Enhanced creativity by providing prompts and visualizations in real time.
- Seamless Integration Designed non-intrusive interfaces for live research sessions.
THE PROBLEM
Helping researchers think with AI
How might we layer AI into live research sessions without distracting participants or adding friction?
EXPERIMENTS
Adaptive dashboard for live sessions—context, prompts, and actions.
Conversation-first view with lightweight controls.
Data visualization components for tracking research progress.
RESEARCH
Understanding researcher needs
User personas
I developed detailed personas based on interviews with Media Lab researchers to understand their communication preferences, pain points, and what success looks like in interdisciplinary collaboration.
User persona capturing researcher needs, values, and decision-making style.
WIREFRAMES
Exploring interface patterns
Low-fidelity wireframes exploring transcript, video, and participant views.
INSIGHTS
Stay out of the way
UI should recede during conversations and surface only the next best action.
Preview the model's thinking
Trust increased when users could see why a suggestion was made.