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Alan Yang profile

NaviGator Assistant

NaviGator Assistant chat window on the UF Information Technology website, shown on a laptop and phone

Live at it.ufl.edu/ai/navigator-assistant, opens in a new tab

Overview

NaviGator Assistant is the University of Florida's first in-house AI chat assistant. It helps students, faculty, and staff find answers from a curated knowledge base of documents. Any approved website can add it with a single line of code.

My Role

Frontend Lead. I led frontend development from the start through launch, working with UX/UI designers, backend engineers, and QA analysts.

The assistant runs inside websites that other teams own, and each one brings its own styles (CSS) that could clash with it. I rendered it inside a Shadow DOM, so the host page's styles can't leak in and the assistant's styles can't leak out. I also made conversations carry over when users move to another page, so they don't have to start again.