Notion AI Assistant

2025

The market is crowded with AI assistants that are represented by sparkles and magic. How do you build one that breaks that mold? We teamed up with Notion to bring to life their AI Assistant, designed by their Art Director Roman Muradov. Working closely with their in-house creative team, we evolved Notion AI from a static drawing into a fluid, dynamic character nicknamed "Nosy" that enhances the experience for millions of users worldwide.

Quick Thinking

Notion wanted their AI Assistant to respond to user actions with personality. Their priority was that the character feel delightful — alert and engaged, but not distracting. This meant creating distinct animations that performed smoothly without impacting load and latency.

Expression Obsession

Following Roman’s signature style and foundational exploration, we began each character animation in cel, to give the performances an innately handmade feel.

With just eyes, brows, and a nose, we crafted playful behaviors that reimagine typical UI states — eyebrows that wave while thinking, a face that momentarily falls apart for errors, and more.

Mixed Emotions

The product required complete fluidity — the face needed to transition seamlessly between any state, and adapt to user interactions in real time. To achieve this, we used Rive's State Machine to build a game-engine-style UX component, allowing expressions to mix and match organically between states. This workflow let us preserve Nosy’s hand-drawn feel with an optimized file size, and retained our original cel performances.

All Smiles

The result? An AI assistant that follows along like an attentive companion.

Notion AI feels natural and accessible to Notion’s millions of users — the product of thoughtful craft meeting state of the art technology.

It goes to show, a little character can go a long way!