One day, I was participating in a college student's event. I noticed a trend between senior students regarding their approach to copying lecture’s lessons.

Students took pictures of many topic pages due to the tight time to copy every text into their notebooks. That raised some questions. And as a UX designer, I went investigating.

Capturing the problem

I approached this problem from a user-centered perspective, I focused on end users (students). I conducted a round of guerilla studies asking diverse senior students about their day-to-day college routine and how they approached files and documents.

Empathizing More

That evening, I tried to empathize more, I brought a lesson paper filled with text and tried to copy it myself through images. I found some frustrations that could be tackled.

That raised a hypothesis about whether the problem was to copy or summarize text. I created a journey map using the data collected and tried to uncover hidden pain points.

The journey map revealed hidden problems such as tight time between sessions and long time copying texts. which encouraged me to specify it in the problem statement.

Photo By Seth Fein
Picture by Seth Fein

Why Google Lens

To design I knew I had to prioritize a useful feature that will allow students to summarize and copy text in images and pages. When ideating I found that most existing services require a learnability to understand their functions. I asked how can I provide a service for students that is widely accessible and easy to understand, and I couldn't forget Google's products.

Google Lens was downloaded by +1,000,000,000 users. It is widely accessible for both low-end Android and IOS devices. Millions use it to search, and it's easy to use. I found it an opportunity for it to integrate seamlessly into students' workflow easily.

Where to add the feature

I approached the app intending to give students the easiest flow to complete their tasks, I deconstructed its sitemap and I found where the feature could be integrated.

Introducing Summarize

I placed the feature on the text page. I wanted to keep the component understandable and easy to find, so I relied on signifiers to explain what could happen and feedback to demonstrate what happened.

With just one click

Taking images to rephrase text in papers would help students not only with their copying but also with saving time copying and summarizing, which would give users more time to accomplish essential tasks.

Easy to share and save

Once a summarized version is ready. Students can easily with Google Docs to share, edit, and invite others to collaborate and view the file smoothly.

Closing thoughts