Lettersmith's Story
Writing professional emails, formatting your resume, and even sending a cold email to a potential employer takes practice. Born from Julie Hui’s dissertation, Lettersmith works to support students with professional communications. In her observations, she noticed that students working on real-world projects had difficulty emailing clients. Students did not know what language to use and often delayed sending emails, which delayed their project progress. Through design-based research, she developed Lettersmith to reduce the anxiety around getting started with writing and scaffold the process of written professional communication. Since then, Lettersmith has been expanded to support a wide range of writing, like cover letters, college essays, and engineering reports.
Lettersmith helps its writers build skills to communicate more effectively with clients, employers, and fellow professionals. Writers can:
This writing tool builds on the collaborative expertise of a writing community to produce guidance that is specific to one’s individual communication goals. Better emails and letters can mean stronger professional relationships, better project planning and reflection, and more confidence in your communication.
Our Team
Our team is made up of designers, developers, behavioral scientists, researchers, and students who work to ensure a pleasant and meaningful experience for Lettersmith admins and writers.
Julie Hui & the Center for Academic Innovation
Julie Hui is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan's School of Information and Director of the Socio-Technical Equity in Practice Lab. Hui studies and develops socio-technical systems that support workforce development. Prior to her arrival at U-M, Hui completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University's Segal Design Institute, where she was funded by the NSF Graduate Research Program Fellowship. She previously interned at Microsoft and Facebook as an HCI/UX Researcher. She received her B.S. in Physics with a Minor in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2011.
The University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation is committed to a future in which education connects and empowers all learners to reach their full potential throughout their lives. We collaborate across campus and around the world to create equitable, lifelong educational opportunities for students and learners everywhere. Our work spans curricular innovation, tools for student success and equity, educational research and analytics, and academic innovation policy.
Our Educational Technology team consists of talented engineers, UX designers, and behavioral scientists who work to create accessible, engaging, equitable experiences for students and instructors alike.
Learn More About Educational Technology
Current Contributors
Former Contributors
David Corneail
Information Architect
Holly Derry
Associate Director, Behavioral Science
Nathan Haynes-Magyar
Senior Software Developer
Sundeep Nagumalli
Systems Administrator
David Nesbitt
Software Portfolio Manager
Dennis O’Reilly
Director, Application Architecture & Software Development
Becky Peng
User Experience Design Fellow
Ollie Saunders
Software Development & DevOps Manager
Jenny Ye
Software Developer
Xucong Zhan
Software Developer
FAQs
Learn more about Lettersmith!
