The design of Mavii is the result of the intense and collaborative effort of Mavii Studios and DeezyBreezy®. When Nick Chapman and Mark Mayo, talented innovators from Mozilla, envisioned Mavii in early 2023, they already knew that artificial intelligence would play a central role in the future of search engines. As design partners, we approached this with a clear philosophy: don’t just make it “look” smart, but make it feel smart. That meant keeping the UI clean, composable, and responsive to nuance. It meant building a framework where users weren’t forced into a single interaction model, but could flow naturally between reading, scanning, clicking, and asking — just like they do in the real world.
Mavii 1.0. Respecting to the traditional browsing
Mavii started as a smart search engine — like Google, but built around AI.
Chapman and Mayo wanted search to be clearer and more useful, understanding user intent, processing queries with real context, and delivering valuable answers, not just endless links. That’s how the first version of Mavii, with an AI assistant at its core, was born.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, we looked at how users already consume information in search environments — and built around that. The AI Summary Card was designed to blend in, not disrupt. It slid naturally into the existing results, surfacing relevant insights right where the user expected them. But it wasn’t static. Depending on the context, it would reshape itself — visually and structurally — to match the nature of the query. Always contextual, always adaptive. And it didn’t dead-end: users could go deeper, asking follow-up questions to explore the topic further.
The team could have stopped there — refining the idea, making gradual improvements. But 2023 was different. The AI race had begun. With Google and Bing jumping into the game, it became clear: just building another smart search engine wouldn’t cut it. So Mavii changed course. Instead of a traditional search, it became an AI-powered chat that helps users find information through conversation. Of course, there were already players — Perplexity, You.com, and others. But that’s what made the path even more exciting. We set out to explore what could make AI search not just different, but better.
Mavii 2.0. Jumping into the chat experience
Mavii’s goal is simple: make AI search feel natural, useful, and engaging. Whether you’re looking up 50s greatest hits, comparing Marshall gear, or exploring Sidney Opera House architectural blueprints, Mavii makes every search smooth, intuitive, and rewarding.
In 2023, most AI chat products, intentionally or not, distanced themselves from traditional search engines. The emphasis was on novelty, on being different. Mavii’s design team followed that spirit early on, especially when it came to structuring information. The standard layout placed the AI-generated text up top, with a horizontal grid of three or four card-like links underneath.
It looked fresh — but the more we reflected, the more something became clear: traditional search still had the upper hand in one crucial area—scanability. So we asked ourselves: what if we stopped trying to reinvent the experience, and instead fused the familiarity of search with the depth of AI responses?
That single question led to a new phase in how we approached Mavii’s design. First, we rethought the way search results were structured. Instead of placing links in a fixed, horizontal grid below the AI response, we moved to a vertical layout. It felt more natural — easier to scan, easier to explore, and more aligned with how people already navigate search today.
Then, we stopped treating text and links as two separate things. Rather than showing the AI answer at the top and links somewhere below, we began blending them together — letting each response feel more alive, more connected, more conversational. In some cases, the AI’s words would naturally lead into a reference or a citation. In others, the links became part of the story being told.
Finally, we brought in a side panel — a more traditional list of links, always accessible, always scannable. It was our way of saying: “If you want to explore manually, go ahead. You’re still in control.”
Working alongside Mavii Studios, our goal wasn’t to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of novelty. We weren’t building a flashy demo. We were trying to make something that genuinely felt better — something that combined the clarity of classic search with the depth and fluidity of modern AI. Not just another AI chat. But a thoughtful bridge between what search was… and what it could become.
During the experiment, Mavii’s design outgrew itself and transformed into an even more fascinating product, on which we continue to work diligently under the Mozilla team’s banner. We look forward to sharing the details with you when the time comes, and in the meantime, we invite you to follow our other releases dedicated to Mavii. Let's delve into the intricacies of the interface, the evolution of the idea, and the challenges we’ve encountered along the way!
