Linda AI

Your Virtual Family Assistant, accessible, affordable, and always at your fingertips

SKILLS

UX Design
Interaction Design
Iterative Design
Presentation Design

TIMELINE

6 Weeks

STATUS

As an interdisplinary team, we developed a pitch, business plan, and product demo. The final presentation was held at Pioneer Square Lab in Seattle WA, in front of 16 top VCs.

TEAM

Product Manager
Backend Engineer
Product Designer (Me)

To watch the full pitch, please see here.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Led brand design & interaction design

As one of the two designers on the team, I collaborated closely with my teammate to create all the visual assets. I prototyped and iterated on the main user flow and interface more than a dozen times based on feedback from users and internal meetings.

In the span of 6 weeks, As a team of 10 (4 MBAs, 4 Engineers, 2 Designers), we built the startup and presented the idea to 16 top VCs at Pioneer Square Lab in Seattle. Specifically, I was the lead designer on the team, spearheading efforts in brand design, interaction design, and presentation design.

PROBLEM

Today's Scheduling & Planning Process is tedious and time consuming.

Let's imagine this:

Scenario

You write down a couple of things -- There are routine things that need to be done; there are also things that just came up.

What does the existing process look like?

Existing Process

There are scheduling things that would require you to find out when & where, and manually put them into calendar; there are also planning things that would take a lot more mental energy, and coordination among different family members.

This happens more often than you imagine:

Problem

What shown earlier is already a very simplified version of a working mom's schedule. In the US, working moms are often overworked at home, by how much planning & scheduling is required.

SOLUTION

Linda AI

An AI-enabled, personalized assistant that makes scheduling and planning accessible to all families

What is Linda AI's mission?

Solution

With Linda being an AI-powered chatbot, we hope to democratize access to personal assistant to all families. Linda's primary job is to maximumly simplify the calendar management and appointment booking process. Additionally, it can help you coordinate events and learn about your preferences solely based on the interactions.

Scenario 1

Linda AI helps user to generate grocery list and schedule time.

Calendar Mangement

Instead of having you to manually update your calendar and decide on the perfect schedule, Linda AI automates it for you! All you need is texting Linda and she will find the right time for you. Moreover, she can also help you to generate household-related ideas, such as a grocery list.

Scenario 2

Linda AI helps user to automatically coordinate a birthday dinner with relatives.

Event Coordination

Have you ever found coordinating an event with many people time consuming? Linda AI is here to help. Now all you need is to provide the list of attendee and information about the event, Linda will do the back-and-forth for you, until finding a time that works for all.

Technology

Linda AI leverages OpenAI API and Azure Cosmos DB.

Tech Stack

Linda AI can live on any popular message platform (eg WhatsApp, Messenger, Text). The goal for our product is to provide a traditional calendar app alternative which allows user to schedule and plan simply using natural language. To minimize the learning curve, user can choose the messageing app that they are most comfortable with.

BUSINESS

Why would Linda AI be a successful startup?

Moat

With Linda AI learning and remembering user preferences, our product is highly defensible. Over time, we accumulate sufficient data to offer personalized experiences. Switching to a competitor becomes unsatisfactory due to their lack of user data (resulting in high switch costs). Moreover, being first to market grants us a supply advantage, especially in family settings, as our closed ecosystem ensures exclusive use of our AI agent app.

Business Model

Linda AI will adopt a 'freemium' model, offering our flagship features for scheduling, planning, and calendar integration. Linda Plus represents the premium plan tailored for individuals seeking access to personalization and memory features. Lastly, with Linda Family, users can enjoy all the Plus features and even invite Linda to their family chat!

Go-to-market Strategy

(Hypothetically speaking) We would lanunch the product on SMS services and the landing pages in the 2nd quarter of 2024. Next, we would go into social media marketing, and once we have some user feedbacks, we could then add the high priority features one by one and incrementally improve our product.

Competitive Analysis

While the market for AI personal assistants is competitive, Linda AI offers a unique edge -- the more you talk to Linda, the more she knows about you and your family. Over time, we are confident that she would become an inseparable part of the family

RESULT

What did the VCs think of our startup?

Did we get a second meeting?

Team Photo

They appreciated the cross-disciplinary, logical experience focusing on the family unit, utilizing chat and WhatsApp as communication channels. They thought the pitch was fantastic, with everyone aligned and building off each other's efforts. However, there is a need to improve focus due to the broad scope of tasks requiring automation. They believed that if this assistant works, it will be highly disruptive in the market.