iClicker AI Question Creator
Enables instructors to swiftly generate up to 50 unique questions tailored to their teaching style and course needs for polls, quizzes, assignments and more.
Project Overview
Problem
Instructors struggled to create fresh questions quickly, especially new teachers without existing materials and experienced instructors whose content had grown stale over time.
Process
Applied right-sized UX approach through progressive beta phases, focusing on learning over polish while maintaining educational product standards and pedagogical rigor.
Impact
Became the first AI feature to launch across the Macmillan Learning ecosystem with 71% of surveyed instructors reporting a positive experience.
“The AI Question Creator paves the way for a more dynamic, adaptive, and interactive learning environment. The tool’s intelligent design saves instructors time, allowing them to spend it where it’s most important, which is engaging with their students.”
— Steven Harper-Ray, VP of New Markets, Macmillan Learning
I helped shape the future vision of iClicker AI Question Creator, and scaled from a small beta of 5-10 instructors to 5,000 instructors.
The goal was to provide a tool that would allow instructors to generate questions that worked with their teaching style.
I collaborated closely with the product owner, UX design director, and lead developer to define the vision of the experience and understand the application of AI. With my role as the primary designer, I was responsible for leading conceptualization, refinement, and delivering design specifications for a final hand-off to the development team.
My Role:
Primary Designer
The Team:
UX Design Director
UX Designer (me)
UX Researcher
Product Owner
Lead Developer
Timeline:
Aug 2023 – Aug 2024
Problem
Instructors struggled to create fresh questions quickly, especially new teachers without existing materials and experienced instructors whose content had grown stale over time.
The iClicker team came to us with a demo made by the lead developer that showcased the early functionality of iClicker AI Question Creator. The goal was to ensure the experience was accessible and provide an optimal experience to get first impressions from a group of 5-10 instructors in a small beta.
Phases of Work for the Project
Phase 1
Minimal Viable (5-10 Instructors)
Started with 2 days of UX work focused on removing usability barriers rather than comprehensive design. The goal: ensure the testing experience wouldn’t interfere with validating core AI functionality.
Phase 2
Expanded Beta (5,000 Instructors)
Scaled to a broader instructor base with the findings from the initial phase. Each phase had different technical requirements, especially around managing AI token costs.
Phase 3
Full Commercial Release
Launched across the entire iClicker instructor user base with confidence built through progressive validation.
Process
Mapping out the user flow for an instructor using the question creator allowed us to identify open questions.
The original user flow was complex and included direct deployment to courses as an activity that could be assigned. There was much to work on, so we scaled the effort to focus on the question creation experience so we can ensure the core experience using AI was sound for testing with users.
Building out the full user journey, we were able to take a closer look at the question creation process and post question creation editing.
The goal was to make sure the AI Question Creator designs would integrate well with the present iClicker instructor web experience. We made use of existing patterns where we could, and created new patterns to improve upon the unique experience. While the team was confident the AI would be sourcing credible information for generating these questions, we wanted to ensure the instructor still had the ability to make adjustments post creation since they are the expert in their field. I was responsible for finalizing the first round of design specifications for the first beta.
Later iterations on the question creation form focused on the refining onboarding and providing effortless question creation.
I iterated on copy to provide instructors with a clear understanding of what the AI needed from them to generate their questions by providing the right amount of context. I also created separation in the form to help the instructor focus on individual parts as they progressively moved down the page to fine-tune their questions. As we received feedback from instructors in the small beta, I made improvements to the onboarding by making use of Pendo to create Pendo Guides that provided more information to instructors who might be new to prompting with an AI.
71% of instructors reported having a positive experience using iClicker AI Question Creator during its beta.
Instructors stated how they found the questions to be accurate and relevant to the question topics they used. In times they had to make edits, there were no issues reported in the question editing experience. One point of friction was the 50 question creation limit. The beta launched with a question creation limit so that the iClicker team could measure the cost of tokens used by the AI to create questions.
“Helpful. Would like to use it more!”
“It’s been great so far. This will save me a lot of time in class prep.”
“Excellent. Is this a permanent feature. Why is there only 50 question limit?”
Instructor quotes from Pendo survey
After the beta concluded, we improved upon the iClicker AI Question Creator to address instructor feedback.
For the full release, the goal was to do away with the question creation limit that was present during there beta. The product owner wanted to also include an option for instructors to use their own course materials to influence the AI on how to format their questions. I suggested using a toggle to allow the instructor to choose between generating questions based on a written prompt or based on an uploaded file.
Working closely with the development team, I built flows to document the happy and sad paths the instructor might find themselves in.
The documentation was quite thorough in this project since we had a lot of paths to cover and didn’t want anything to go uncaught. As new information came in from the development team and the product owner, I was quick to make adjustments to our designs and documentation. After three phases of work, the iClicker AI Question Creator was eventually integrated into the iClicker instructor web experience proper.
Impact
The iClicker AI Question Creator became the first AI feature to successfully launch across the entire Macmillan Learning ecosystem, launching as a beta to 5,000 instructors before full commercial release. Approximately 71% of instructors who shared feedback with the team reported having a positive experience utilizing the tool.
The beta-first approach proved faster than traditional upfront design methods would have been for AI features requiring real usage data. Strategic UX involvement from the beginning enabled smart go-to-market decisions without typical delays, while the lean collaboration model demonstrated that UX accelerates rather than delays AI experimentation when applied strategically.
Reflection
This was the first project I had the opportunity to take the lead on from initial conception to final release where I worked closely with the lead developer and the product owner. I learned some lessons from this project that I’ve taken into other projects I’ve worked on, such as:
- The importance of constant communication with the product owner and the development team as we worked on an experimental feature using AI. This was key to knowing when we needed to pivot on a design as more was learned about its capabilities.
- Organizing documentation into flows led to a better understanding on the intended behavior in user journey for both developers and quality assurance (QA).