Encouraging Collaboration with Goodnotes Classroom
PRODUCT DESIGN
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2025
GOODNOTES
THE PROBLEM
54% of teachers’ time is spent not teaching
From grading work to lesson planning, high administrative burden pulls them away from meaningful student interaction. We wanted to explore how the future of education could be transformed into a more collaborative, supportive environment using Goodnotes Classroom.
Our design introduces intelligent features that streamline administrative workflows, enable seamless collaboration, and give teachers the time back to focus on what matters most: personalized student support and engagement.
THE SOLUTION
Goodnotes Classroom View: bridging the physical and digital classrooms
How can we encourage teacher involvement in collaborative student work with digital tools?
While Goodnotes Classroom allows teachers to view student work in real-time, empowering them to provide specific, one-on-one feedback and reducing administrative burden, it lacks a way to easily identifying learning gaps with the intention of encouraging student collaboration.
With our Goodnotes Classroom View feature, teachers can also view a visualization of their physical classroom. By filtering student work by progress, accuracy, and collaboration levels, they can quickly identify exactly who needs assistance and with what topics. This helps teachers form intentional student groups, helping close gaps and maximize the value of collaboration.
Let's take a closer look…
Project Overview
As part of the Invention Corps at Berkeley's bi-annual designathon sponsored by Goodnotes, I developed this project with a team of two other designers and one software engineer. During this intense all-day design sprint, I was heavily involved in all steps of the project, from ideation, to prototyping, to decking.
The final product consists of three new features that would seamlessly integrate into Goodnotes Classroom's existing platform to improve the teacher-student collaboration process.
Check out our final presentation below!
UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE
How might we use AI to encourage human collaboration through Goodnotes Classroom?
"What could the future of collaboration in the classroom look like—with Goodnotes at its core?"
We aimed to design an experience where classroom collaboration is not just functional, but transformational—equitable, inspiring, and human-centered.
DESIGN DEEP DIVE
Creating a classroom collaboration management workflow
Customize filters reveal learning needs
Create filters to easily identify and organize students profiles based on their progress in important learning metrics, such as completion and accuracy levels. Customize filters based on specific needs and assignments.
Generate groups that encourage collaboration
When initiating collaborative work sessions, generate productive student groups based on student strengths and weaknesses. Auto-generate puts together optimal groups to encourage effective collaboration.
Classroom View guides classroom walkthroughs
Bridge the physical classroom with the digital classroom by using a classroom table management system. During group work, get notified about which groups may need more attention to assist in the assignment. This includes the specific topics they might be struggling with.
RESEARCH
Why teacher to student collaboration?
We considered several avenues for our project:
In teacher to teacher collaboration, educators would have an easy way to share teaching resources and discuss shared curriculums.
In student to student collaboration, students would be encouraged to collaborate with their peers in new and engaging ways.
Ultimately, we decided on teacher to student collaboration in order to transform a more direct learning experience.
We conducted market and user research, including competitor analysis and user interviews.
Teachers were looking for: ways to better understand student progress
Students were looking for: ways to engage with their teachers without fear or embarrassment
From our secondary research, we found that using technology to provide real-time feedback would be beneficial to both teachers and students.
REFLECTION
My favorite designathon prompt!
Throughout my many designathon experiences, this goes down as my favorite prompt thus far. Not only did I learn so much about ed-tech on a global scale, but also about how to leverage AI as a tool to empower learning and encourage face-to-face interaction. Huge thank you to my teammates, Ashley, Kai, and Colin, for such an amazing experience!
