Context

The Browser Company of New York, creator of fan favorite Arc Browser, set its sights on creating something new for a changing landscape. As a team of seasoned engineers and product designers, they were far removed from the collegiate environment and how students use AI in their day-to-day lives, school, and at work - if at all. As a School of Browser student ambassador, our beloved lead, Devin Lewtan tasked us with finding out how students really feel about AI.

Process & Approach

Given the broad scope, we began by defining who & what we’re researching.

Target Research Candidate: the student body (n.)

The average student who is not in the tech industry & not an AI power user.

The Dia team wasn’t looking for the top 1% of AI users. Sometimes, tech can be an echo chamber filled with noise and overcomplicated workflows. They wanted to meet the average student where they were.

The School of Browser ambassadors and I went on campus to have real conversations with students. We collected more than 200 data points, most of which were qualitative. Hats off to the incredible Hope Hsieh, Selene Chang, Jacqueline Guo, Kristen Choi, & Miles Dobrenski for cleaning the data and reading between the lines.

20+ schools surveyed nationwide

200+ data points

65+ students interviewed

While they wrangled the data, Elissa Martial and I worked on the deliverables. As facilitators of the data collection process, we already had a general understanding of student sentiment and usage, and could incorporate granular, data based statistics later.

We determined 3 components to make the research easily digestible, shareable, and, most importantly, whimsical:

• A long-form research article detailing research methodology, statistics, & student archetypes

• An interactive personality quiz that lets users discover their AI persona

• A short-form documentary video, which I produced and edited, featuring student interviews

Key Findings