Designing and Shipping a New Feature on a Live Platform

Smartwork supported standard question types, but had no way to handle multi-step problems — a critical gap for STEM subjects like chemistry, where students need to work through complex problems one step at a time. Instructors were using workarounds. Students had no system support for structuring their thinking across steps. The feature had to be introduced into a live platform with 1M+ active users, strict UI patterns, and no room for disruption.

Design and ship a new question type that supports multi-step problem solving — without breaking existing workflows or disorienting the 1M+ users already on the platform.

Led end-to-end design from proof of concept to production across three user groups: students, instructors, and content creators

Introduced a new interaction model into a legacy system by extending existing components rather than replacing them

Solved a dual navigation conflict — the platform had assignment-level navigation while Sequential Questions introduced step-level navigation within a single question

Designed progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load across multi-step flows

Balanced instructor flexibility with student simplicity — complex configuration on the backend, clean guided experience on the front

Delivered detailed UI specifications and stayed closely involved through development and QA

Adopted by 35% of instructors following launch

64% of instructors rated it better or much better than existing solutions

Established a reusable framework for future interaction models across the platform

Continues to expand across disciplines beyond chemistry