to seconds.
Teachers in the UK are leaving the profession in record numbers. Not because they don't love teaching but because they can't find time to actually do it.
The brief was self-imposed: build a tool that solves a real problem for real people. Smiling Bard went from research and interviews, through brand identity, product design and development, to a live shipped product. One person. End to end.
Three key design
principles.
Reduce friction at every step. Teachers are time-poor and cognitively stretched. Every unnecessary click, every moment of confusion, is a reason to give up and go back to doing it manually. The design principle was simple: complexity is the enemy. Get out of the way and let the teacher focus on teaching.
Design for the desk, not the phone. Most ed-tech products default to mobile-first. Research said otherwise. Teachers plan lessons at desks, on laptops, often with multiple tabs open. Building mobile-first would have solved the wrong problem. Desktop-first was a deliberate, research-backed decision.
The brand should feel like the product. Smiling Bard isn't only an app: it's a belief that teaching should be joyful. The visual identity, the name, the copy, all of it carries the same warmth and optimism as the product itself. Brand and product designed as one thing, not two.
How it
works
By the
numbers
4 days. Brief to delivery. Including briefing session, feedback rounds and final handoff. Senior-level output. Zero shortcuts.
Deliverables:
Full V1 UI designs,
Dev-ready design files and documentation
two rounds of feedback
Design system foundations
One happy startup
