.png)
ResearchAI: Making Academic Research Accessible to anyone
Recognition
Our work on ResearchAI was nominated for the UX Design Awards 2025, an international competition celebrating outstanding user experience. This recognition affirmed the real-world relevance, usability, and innovation of our design demonstrating its potential to make a meaningful impact in the academic and research space.
Overview
ResearchAI is a mobile-first academic tool that transforms dense research papers into digestible, scrollable insights just like a social media feed, but for learning. By combining artificial intelligence with UX best practices, our goal is to make academic research more accessible, time-efficient, and engaging for students, researchers, and lifelong learners.
Solution
Every day, thousands of academic papers are published—but accessing and understanding them remains slow, overwhelming, and uninviting. Most discovery tools are outdated and don’t reflect the reading habits of today’s users. We asked ourselves:
How can we reimagine academic research discovery in a way that feels as intuitive and engaging as social media without sacrificing credibility or depth?
Role & Responsabilities
Within this project, I :
- Designed and conducted user research and interviews
- Performed competitor analysis and a targeted literature review
- Developed low- to high-fidelity prototypes
- Implemented UX patterns inspired by microlearning and social media behavior
- Ran usability tests with students and academic researchers
- Designed the promotional content and carried out the nomination for the IDC UX awards
Research & Insights
We conducted:
- 3 user surveys
- 12 user interviews (students, PhDs, and lecturers)
- Comparative analysis of platforms like Google Scholar, Litmaps, and ResearchGate
Key findings
- Users scroll instinctively, headlines and results matter more than titles and abstracts
- Trust and credibility are critical: users want direct access to full papers
- Many learners want research without academic jargon
.png)
.png)
Design Approach
Our goal was to repurpose social media habits for academic gain:
- A personalised feed based on your field (psychology, design, history…)
- Each card summarizes a real academic paper’s findings
- Section-by-section summaries and chatbot Q&A
- One-tap access to the full PDF for credibility and transparency
We applied microlearning principles to break down complex texts while preserving core insights.
Testing & Iteration
Two rounds of usability testing led to major improvements:
- Refined card layouts for faster readability
- Visual trust indicators for peer-reviewed sources
- More intuitive navigation between summary and full paper
.png)
.png)
.png)