Turning a Buried Tool into a Flagship Product
How we transformed an under-utilized AI feature into an engaging and invaluable tool for students.
My Role
Creative Direction | Copywriting | Strategy | Workshopping
The Problem
We had an AI bot,
but it nobody wanted to use it.
When GenAI hit, every education company scrambled to bolt an “AI tutor” onto their product. Varsity Tutors already had one. The trouble was that almost nobody used it. It was buried, undefined as an experience, and lacking any real personality. It had been treated as a feature, not a product.
The real opportunity was to build the thing students would actually want to engage with.
The Approach
Define the experience.
Then define the personality.
To make it relevant, our team worked to reimagine the AI tutor. I led brand personality workshops to define what the tutor should sound like and stand for. We weren’t just deciding what it could do. We were deciding what it would say to a stressed-out 13-year-old the night before a test. From there, I built out the messaging frameworks: voice, tone, personality, naming conventions, and the small UX moments where character shows through.
The Work
We partnered with external agencies to explore every layer of the experience, from how Linel introduced itself to how it responded when a student got something wrong. The work covered its visual personality, conversational patterns, and the small interactions that make a product feel alive. The goal was a tutor that felt like a great teacher. Patient, curious, a little playful, never condescending.
We named it Linel.
Look and Personality Explorations
The mock-ups showed how Linel would live across subjects, sessions, and moments of struggle. Each touchpoint was designed to feel less like a tool and more like a presence. Someone in your corner.
App Interaction Mock-ups
The Result
Validated by students.
Ready when Nerdy is.
The work earned full executive buy-in. Initial testing with middle and high school students was the most encouraging part: they responded to the personality, the clarity, and the fun. They wanted to keep talking to it.
The project was eventually shelved due to shifting priorities, but the messaging foundation, the voice, the personality, the framework, remains intact. It’s still ready to power Nerdy’s AI tutor when the moment is right.