Laura's MacBook
Available for projects
flylane-case-study

Guiding students with AI-driven career planning

Building Laney, an AI companion that empowers students to discover careers, generate personalised education roadmaps, and engage meaningfully with career counsellors.

Founding product designer March to June 2025

The problem

Flylane's human counsellors help families in India plan their child's path to a university in the UK, USA or Canada.

But counsellors' first sessions with students were tedious data gathering that under-used their expertise, leading to poor job satisfaction.

Students, meanwhile, struggled to imagine what they might enjoy from a career. They couldn't see what was possible.

How might we engage students alongside sessions with human counsellors?

What I designed

Laney, an AI agent that helps students explore their interests and gives counsellors a summary of each student, so their sessions can be about aspirations and planning rather than data gathering.

Laney's AI-led chat: Laney introduces itself, asks the student's name and what grade they are in
AI-led chat. Laney drives the conversation, not the student, then suggests careers to research.
A career match-making card for Marine Biologist, with a day-in-the-life summary, key skills and subjects
Career match-making. Students swipe through careers, and Laney learns what they like.
A student profile with an AI-generated future avatar, key skills, dreams, extracurriculars and grades
Student profile. Kept up to date by chatting with Laney, and shared with counsellors.
The student dashboard showing quests, a chat with Laney, marksheet upload and a prompt to meet an academic counsellor
Dashboard. Progress at a glance, with prompts to book a counsellor.
A row of mobile screens from Laney's Education Plan for Adi, a student who wants to be a marine biologist
Then, Education Plans. Students rarely came back after their first session, and almost all were on their phones. So Laney evolved: give it a job title, and it builds a personalised, mobile-first Education Plan.

The impact

7 minaverage first session
90%+of students used Laney on Android phones

The mobile finding countered our assumption that educational planning would happen on a desktop, and shaped Education Plans. They launched shortly before my contract ended, so I wasn't able to track return visits. The business has since pivoted toward tutoring and exam preparation, and Laney has been retired. It was nice to know you, Laney!