All work
Case Study 04 — 2023
Quill
Designed an AI writing tool from research to launch — now used by 60k+ writers monthly.
Client
Quill (YC W23)
Role
Founding Designer
Duration
8 months (pre-seed → launch)
Team
2 Founders · 3 Engineers
Quill (YC W23) 2023
Q
Quill
01 — Context
The brief, in plain terms.
Writers were drowning in AI tools that wrote *for* them. Quill's bet: a tool that writes *with* you — and stays out of the way.
The challenge
Design an editor that makes AI feel like a collaborator, not an autocomplete dispenser, without overwhelming the page with controls.
02 — Approach
How I broke down the problem.
- 01
Studied 40 hours of writers using existing tools — most pain was in *interrupting* the writer's flow.
- 02
Built the entire product around a single primitive: select text, ask a question.
- 03
Designed an opinionated empty state — the blank page is the hardest UX problem in writing.
- 04
Cut every feature that didn't earn its place in the first 90 seconds.
03 — Deliverables
- End-to-end product design (web + desktop)
- Editor UX and inline AI interactions
- Brand identity and marketing site
- Onboarding flow and pricing page
04 — Outcomes
60k+
Monthly active writers
$1.4M
ARR within 6 months
73%
Day-7 retention
1
Product Hunt #1 of the day
05 — Reflection
“0→1 design is mostly subtraction. Every feature you ship is a feature you'll have to defend.”
Next project — 01