1. The Opportunity
The QuillBot extension had accumulated design and product debt since its release in 2020. Many issues had piled up, and we started to look at them as opportunities rather than challenges.
Seamless integration:
The extension needed to feel natural in Chrome's toolbar and interfaces such as Gmail, Docs, LinkedIn, Slack, and others, without feeling like a pop-up app.
Feature discovery:
Users could use both Grammar Checker and Paraphraser, but choosing simplicity risked burying powerful features.
Designing for scale:
It was necessary for several designers to confidently, correctly, and consistently use shared components on extensions and future apps.
2. My Approach & Design Leadership
After assuming leadership of the design team, I began enhancing the team's workflow and visual design standards between May 22 and December 23.
UX-Driven Discovery:
Explored friction in Gmail, Notion, Slack, etc. via site-specific interviews and diary investigations. QuillBot staff engaged in extensive dogfooding.
Reduced decision fatigue by hiding complicated choices behind expanded menus and defaulting to basic features. (Hick's Law)
We placed inline recommendations very next to one another to hasten corrections. (Fitts’s Law)
Focus on intuitive interfaces.
Integrated Chrome-like UI designs, such side-drawer pop-ups with natural feel imitation.(Jakob's Law)
First displayed only basic paraphrase; unlocked options including "Formal" and "Concise" after interaction started. (Progressive Disclosure)
Limited suggestion bubbles to five to seven objects, hence lessening cognitive load. (Miller's Law)
Team Culture & Design process:
Encouraged peer evaluations and brainstorming as part of a cooperative design culture.
Weekly critiques that focused on competitor analysis, product enhancements, and the development of critical thinking and communication skills
We began documenting our projects using Jira, which offers accountability and transparency.
The team used a common visual design style based on auto-layout. By implementing a component library based on Atomic Design, version mismatches were reduced by approximately 30%.
3. Design led Initiatives
Prioritization was given to several design-led projects that improved usability and addressed user needs.
QuillBot for Chrome landing page on website
One click grammar - Fixall
Flexible widget placement
Advanced paraphrasing on gmail
Error Explainer
Foreign Language Detection
Uninstallation survey with Actionable feedback
Sentence Recomemndations
Pause/play extension
Upsell Chrome extension on webapp
4. Impact, leading to Google recognition.
We transformed QuillBot's Chrome extension from solid functionality to Google-recognized, user-loved, design-forward greatness by combining UX expertise, research-driven decisions, scalable systems, and team leadership.
By December 2023, there were 1.5 million users, up 15 times from 100,000 in February 2022.
On the Chrome store, user ratings increased from 3.9 to 4.4.
There was a 35% decrease in uninstallations.
Frameworks for Product A/B testing were made possible by scalable designs.
With the webapp for the grammar checker and paraphraser, 80% feature parity was attained.
5. What happened next?
We transformed QuillBot's Chrome extension from solid functionality to Google-recognized, user-loved, design-forward greatness by combining UX expertise, research-driven decisions, scalable systems, and team leadership.
We have 5 million Chrome installs as of July 2025, with a rating of 4.7.
Our new AI assistant and enhanced widget have been released.
New features like toolbox, AI generation, and tones were tested.
introduced Safari and Edge extensions based on the Chrome extension
Additionally, we added desktop and mobile apps to our lineup, and the ecosystem as a whole now has over 12 million users.
6. My growth..
We transformed QuillBot's Chrome extension from solid functionality to Google-recognized, user-loved, design-forward platform by combining UX expertise, research-driven decisions, scalable systems, and team leadership.
I moved from lead designer to design leader, creating a space where people can develop.
I came to understand that fostering team creativity through principles rather than micromanagement is more effective.
Our ability to prioritize strategic decision-making and tactical design tradeoffs allowed us to design quickly without compromising quality.
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