Leaguers Essay Review System

Simplifying college essay review for highschool students & college mentors
Client
Phalus Inc.
Role
Product Designer
Team
1 Tech Lead
1 Designer
Timeline
October 2022 - May 2023
(8 Months)

Project Context

Leaguers connects college mentors with high schoolers for college essay support.

The platform moved away from using Google Docs to a built-in essay review system for secure, all-in-one collaboration.

Problem

The current interface feels outdated and unintuitive with cluttered layouts and inconsistent visuals.

Goals

Leaguers needs a new platform that has a modern interface that feels current, trustworthy and causes no friction.

User Interviews

I conducted interviews with 10 participants, including existing users and individuals with experience with other similar platforms.

· 5 high school students: understand struggles with essay writing and managing feedback
· 5 college student mentors: identify workflow challenges and what makes delivering feedback difficult

Findings From Interview

High school students:
· Want clearer guidance on how to improve their essays beyond surface-level edits
· Feel overwhelmed by multiple versions and scattered feedback

College mentors:
· Struggle to manage multiple students and essays
· Find unstructured feedback hard to track

Both groups:
· Feel essay writing is deeply personal and emotionally taxing
· Need for a structured yet flexible system that supports clarity, empathy, and progress tracking

User Persona

Design Statement

How might we make essay feedback easier to give, clearer to receive, and smoother to manage—for both students and mentors?

Solution #1

In-Line Feedback Interface

We created a clean, modern interface that allows mentors to leave comments directly next to each essay paragraph. This structure mirrors the natural reading and feedback process, reducing context-switching.


Improve Feedback Flow

Mentors can now highlight and comment in-line, making their feedback more precise and easier to act on for students.


Clarify Intent
Grouped comments by type (grammar, structure, content, etc.) help students understand the purpose of each suggestion.

Solution #2

Essay History & Feedback Timeline

The Essay History view enables both high school students and mentors to easily track the evolution of feedback over time. Its goals are:


Enhance understanding

See how essays have improved through revisions and feedback cycles


Improve mentorship

Help mentors tailor feedback based on a student’s past work and revision trends

Improve version clarity

Avoid confusion by clearly separating and labeling each essay draft.

Before

After
Summary of Changes

Result

Redesigned essay feedback system served over 1,500 users and reduced mentor response time by 30%.

Team Feedback

Reflection

Learnings

This was my first time designing an end-to-end essay feedback system, and it pushed me far beyond visual design into research, user interviews, usability testing, and cross-functional collaboration.

Bridging design and engineering

I made the mistake of handing off designs before syncing deeply with engineering. As a result, parts of the system had to be reworked for feasibility. I’ve since learned the value of bringing engineers into the design process early to spot constraints.

Balancing ideal and viable

There were many moments when I had to trade "perfect" for "possible." Whether it was adjusting the number of features at launch or simplifying complex flows, I learned how to prioritize what matters most for users.

Milestones

Presented Leaguers to a panel of investors.
Operated out of a startup working hub in Seoul during development.
Leaguers HQ in Seoul
Received ₩50,000,000 in startup funding from the South Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

My Other Works

Scope Design System
Unifying Web & Mobile Interfaces for Guided Learning
Ollio Sponsorship Management
Sponsorship management made simpler for brands and creators.