Niche
Niche is a platform students use to research and compare colleges, known for its school rankings, grades, and reviews. When Niche acquired Goodkind (now branded Niche Engage) in early 2025 to expand its Higher Ed offering into direct, ongoing student communication. I stayed on through the transition, working at the intersection of both products.
Product Designer Level II
2026
Chatbot
Goodkind's chatbot handled basic Q&A type of conversations well. We wanted to take it further. I designed a widget that embedded a short video carousel alongside school-specific data like rankings and grades, making it feel less like a FAQ tool and more like a guided campus tour.
I built the prototype using AI coding tools, without pulling in engineering. Moving fast allowed us to get it in front of stakeholders quickly and bring it on client calls to gauge interest, well before any formal build.
Niche Engage chatbot video feature demo
Niche chatbot admin panel and explorations
Design System Migration
When Niche acquired Goodkind, the product needed to look like it belonged to the same family. A full rebuild wasn't realistic since the two products ran on different tech stacks and the timeline was tight.
What I proposed was simpler: update Goodkind's existing design system, that already existed in Figma and Storybook, to match Niche's visual language. Colors, typography, iconography, borders etc. Surface level changes that didn't require touching the underlying layouts or patterns. It kept the scope small. One front-end engineer, a fraction of the time a rebuild would have taken. And in the end Niche engineers were able to start working in Goodkind's codebase with components they already recognized.
Niche engage design system update overview