The Challenge

Moving Beyond Passive Learning

Design education has largely remained passive—students watch videos, read articles, and consume content without meaningful opportunities to practice their craft. While platforms like Codecademy, Maven, and UXcel teach code and design bootcamps teach visual principles, there truly has not beed a 'Leetcode for design' platform that tests designers and give real-time feedback.

The Solution

Rather than forcing a linear curriculum, I created a modular choose-your-path system. Students could focus on design principles, dive into HTML/CSS fundamentals, or explore design tools like Figma and Sketch based on their individual goals and existing skill levels. This flexibility was critical for serving both complete beginners and designers with some experience.

Technical Implementation and UX

The biggest UX challenge was making the platform simple enough for absolute beginners while still teaching meaningful, valuable skills. I couldn't oversimplify to the point where students weren't learning real HTML/CSS, but I also couldn't overwhelm them with technical complexity that would cause drop-off.

As a solo designer and developer, I had to be efficient with my time and resources. I used a combination of tools and libraries to build the platform, including React, Tailwind CSS, and Framer Motion. I also used the Vercel AI SDK to generate code and feedback for the platform. Claude Code was also used for tricky interactions like live code editing and annotation.

Building the platform as both designer and developer gave me deep insight into the technical challenges of education platforms. Creating a performant live code editor that provided instant preview and real-time validation required careful optimization. The feedback system needed to recognize correct solutions while providing helpful guidance for common mistakes.

Design System & Visual Language

I deliberately made the landing page as jarring as possible to attract attention.

Rather than adding gamification elements like badges or leaderboards, I kept the focus on intrinsic motivation—the satisfaction of seeing your code build properly or positive AI feedback from correctly replicating a design.

Results & Impact

I have presented PogiDraw at Union Square Ventures, Stripe x Vercel Demo Night, and RAID (Research, AI, and Design).

Over 600 waitlisted for the platform, and 100+ users have been manually onboarded. The hope is to eventually make this product open source, community-driven, and free to use.