Designing to make classrooms more fun all over the world.

A sneak peak into my days at Quizizz where I designed delightful experiences for 75M+ people, in 150+ countries answering 50M+ questions/day. Alongside a team thats spread across the globe.

I was the sole designer at Seeko, I poured my heart into crafting the brand’s identity and design ethos. I was a regular to education conferences where I showcased and represented our app and used that time to study other apps in the market, talk to users and founders among other things. It was here that I first stumbled upon Quizizz, and was impressed with what they were building. The year was 2019, and Quizizz’s global reach, serving students and teachers of all ages, intrigued me.

Fast forward to 2021, the post-pandemic era witnessed a surge in ed tech popularity in India. One sunny morning, I received a call from the Head of Design at Quizizz, inviting me to join their team. It was a no-brainer; I eagerly accepted the opportunity to shape designs for millions of users worldwide. Reflecting on the two years spent in this dynamic startup, designing for Quizizz has been not just a job but a truly fulfilling experience. Allow me to share the journey and the reasons behind my enthusiasm. Sit back, and let me walk you why I loved it.

Teachers and students love using our app

Scrolling through our internal Slack channels, I’ve got this sweet spot called #teacher-love-on-twitter. It’s where we collect tweets from teachers talking about Quizizz. It’s like a warm hug for the soul and was the first things Iwould open every morning. Reading through these made us realise everyday that what we’re cooking up is not just handy but genuinely making classrooms everywhere more fun. It’s these moments that make us high-five each other in the office and keep the Quizizz love train chugging along. 🚂 💙

Building fast to fail faster

At Quizizz, we shipped every other day. We learn most from shipping & Quizizz’s shipping speed caught me off guard when I joined and then started to enjoy it (It helped me immensely when I designed in crypto/defi startups later on) Devs coding, testers on bug patrol, and designers deep in prototype and sticky note mode. No dull days, just a dynamic rhythm of work. As a designer, whats most fulfilling for me is sharing the prototypes with real users and watching them interact with it, finding out which of our hypotheses are true and which aren’t. This happened so often at quizizz and it was an enriching experience.

75M+ active users, tens of thousands coming in everyday for the first time.

Every day, tens of thousands of teachers worldwide use Quizizz in their classrooms for the first time. And here’s the cool part: even if you’re working for something super specific, like a tiny niche within a niche, Quizizz’s big audience makes your experiments matter.

Take my project last year, for example. I zoned in on middle school Math teachers in Indonesia, a pretty specific group. Surprisingly, even with that small target, a bunch of teachers hopped on board, making it feel like I was making a dent in the universe.

More recently, I tinkered with a bringing in AI features to creating quizs. We tested it with just 20% of our intended audience, and even with a tiny 1% click rate, the data poured in. Small experiments, big impact. That’s the Quizizz magic! 🚀🌍📚

User-focused, not easily hocus-pocused.

Designing at Quizizz means keeping it real close to the users. We are speak to the end user almost everyday. Despite our huge scale, teachers and students stay top of mind. Our user research team was one amongts the finest and along with Survicate they lets us whip up spot-on surveys for instant feedback. I spent many coffee breaks flocking all over feedback forums, actively fishing for user insights and discussing about it. We go to our Engagement team to help us to scheduling play testing sessions with students to mimic real classrooms — so that we figure out nitty-gritty of what works and what doesn’t.

We’ve had our fair share of packing up our tools (plus a stash of candies for the kiddos) and hitting the road to test our prototypes in classrooms. Jotting down every detail and mentally crafting those “how might we”s . It’s hands-on, it’s real, and it’s where the magic of refining our product truly happened. 🎯✨

Design plays an irreplaceable role in the product

In the world of tools, there are the ones your someone insists on and you end up using half heartedly, and then there are the ones you enjoy using and rep it everywhere. At Quizizz, we’re all about being in that second category — the tools teachers and students genuinely want to come back to.

Sure, there are tons of tools for quizzes and classroom stuff, but what sets Quizizz apart is the heart and soul we pour into designing these experiences. Take a little thing like the “Show only top 5” checkbox, for example that shows after the completion of a quiz. Only the top 5 students light up the leaderboard, keeping the rest incognito. Why? Because we get it — not everyone wants their name on the big screen. It’s the little things like this checkbox that make Quizizz a thoughtful companion in classrooms. (Btw, this is one of things that came directly out of our classroom excursions)

You’re surrounded with diverse talent

Since the early days when the design team was still small, roles in Quizizz were fluid. I didn't just design, I led projects, ideated marketing campaigns, designed merch, hiring new designers, handling stuff from A to Z. Quizizz has grown and we’ve become more specialized, the awesome thing is that the core value of people valuing your inputs, especially if they’re good, hasn’t changed.

While many places talk about the idea that good ideas can sprout from anywhere, Quizizz doesn’t just pay lip service to it; we embody it.

You get to work on new unexplored problems

Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition

Quizizz operates in areas that hasn’t been explored very much. There are many EdTech tools, but there are very few whose bread and butter is making the classroom experience more engaging for students while giving teachers all the necessary tools — a literal replacement for paper, pen and blackboard. At Quizizz, I wasn't be building the 50th checkout flow; but was more likely to be solving an important problem that historically no one ever cared enough about. To me, that was very exciting.

Cast of fun mascots to give you company

At Quizizz, we want students to enjoy their time within the product. So, we decided to introduce a lively cast of characters. Over the past 18 months, I along with illustrators, carefully crafted this diverse and fun crew of characters and illustrations. The goal? To motivate and, hopefully, make our global community fall in love with studying with tech.

If you’ve explored Quizizz, those adorable mascot characters probably caught your eye in every nook and cranny of the platform. They’re not just cute faces; they’re the heart of our brand. Because learning spans languages and cultures, we ensure our characters represent a diverse range of perspectives. We even take a break now and then to brainstorm about these characters and their stories, ensuring they’re used thoughtfully to create fun experiences across the platform. These charming illustrations are another reason why working at Quizizz is a joy.