edtech · product and brand design · updated 2026-10-03

Edtech product design from someone who has designed two learning products

Our creative advisor was the first designer at Toppr, whose learning products reached more than 1.2 million students, and later built the product, brand and design team at Zero, an AI-native learning and hiring platform. The studio is new; that experience is what it is built on.

The experience, stated plainly

Toppr, 2016 to 2018. Atul Khola was the initial designer at an Indian after-school learning app that Byju's acquired in July 2021 (The News Minute). He designed products used by more than 1.2 million students, including Doubts on Chat. More on Toppr →

Zero, from 2025. He joined as the third person in the company and designed the product from a blank file: learners enter a simulated company, work on projects with AI coworkers and present to stakeholders. He built a 12-person Design & Experience team, and the beta drew a waitlist of 10,000 people. More on building Zero →

Zero's brand site, Why Zero, won Awwwards Site of the Day and FWA of the Month; Awwwards files it under Culture & Education.

What is hard about designing for learning

• The course dashboard is a trap. Modules and progress bars are the obvious layout, and they make every product feel like the last one the learner abandoned. Zero deliberately started somewhere else: a company, a manager, a brief.
• Some effort should stay. At Zero, learners take their own notes and defend their work under questioning, because that effort is the learning. Removing all friction can remove the point.
• AI help can do too much. An assistant that hands over the answer leaves the learner with nothing. The design question is how much help, and when.
• The learner is often not the buyer. At Toppr the audience was students; the product also had to work for the company's own sales team. Zero charges recruiters, not learners.
• Proof matters more than completion. A certificate says someone finished. A record of what they made and how they explained it is more useful to an employer.

What we do for an edtech startup

For a first version or a rethink of the core learning loop, the Product Design Sprint ($25,000, 6 weeks): the main flows, their states, and a light design system. When the company also needs a name people remember and a site that explains it, Brand + Site ($22,000, 5–6 weeks). Open-scope product design runs $15,000–$45,000 and brand identity $15,000–$35,000.

What we do not claim

The studio has no edtech client work yet. Zero was preparing for its first users when Atul wrote up his time there, so we have no learning-outcome or retention numbers from it, and we will not imply any. Zero's funding is not public and we do not describe it as a funded company. We are product and brand designers, not curriculum designers; the pedagogy is yours.

Where to look next

The numbers behind how startups present themselves are in State of YC startup design 2026 (705 homepages). The homepage grader checks yours against the same signals in your browser, free.

The work behind this page

work · led by our creative advisor · not studio client work

All work →

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