Designing Purple Tutor — the AI-powered coding education platform trusted by 150,000+ students across 75+ countries.
In a world where coding literacy is becoming essential, Purple Tutor set out to transform how children aged 5 to 12 learn computational thinking — through live classes, quizzes, and play.
Purple Tutor is a company focused on providing live, online classes in computational thinking (coding) for children in classes 2 through 9. Founded by educators and technology leaders from IIT Bombay, the platform was built on a bold premise: every child can learn to code, if the experience feels like play. The curriculum was designed in collaboration with two of the world's top institutions — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).
Purple Tutor partnered with international schools in India and Dubai to recruit teachers who underwent a rigorous 4-stage selection process and a 3-month training program before being onboarded for teaching. The platform believed every child is a unique learner, and invested in building customised learning paths — performing thorough assessments during the first few sessions, then co-creating a tailored curriculum in discussion with expert educators.
By 2024, Purple Tutor had scaled to over 400 employees, served 150,000+ students across 75+ countries, and achieved USD 2M+ ARR. In December 2024, Miko — the Mumbai-based AI robotics company known for its educational companion robots — acquired Purple Tutor, integrating live coding classes and gamified learning into Miko's AI-powered hardware ecosystem for children aged 5 to 12.
Designing an experience that keeps children engaged in learning to code while giving parents visibility, control, and confidence.
The fundamental design challenge was dual-audience: children and parents have completely different mental models, motivations, and interaction patterns. A child opening the app wants to play a quiz, challenge a friend, or earn bananas. A parent opening the same app wants to track their child's learning progress, book a trial class, or review curriculum alignment.
Making it harder: the children using Purple Tutor ranged from 5-year-olds who could barely read to 12-year-olds who wanted to feel like real coders. The gamification had to scale across these wildly different cognitive stages — engaging enough for a kindergartener, yet not patronising for a pre-teen studying AI and Machine Learning.
In India's crowded edtech market — with WhiteHat Jr, BYJU's, and Cuemath competing for the same parental wallet — the app couldn't just be educational. It had to be the app kids actually asked to open.
Insights from observing children learn, interviewing parents, and studying how gamification drives retention in young learners.
The design decisions that transformed a coding class into a gaming platform kids wanted to use every day.
The key features I designed across Purple Tutor's student and parent experiences.
The student home screen was designed as a content hub — not a dashboard. Prominent action cards for Play, Learn, and social features (Invite friends, Create a Reel, Post Your Project) gave children multiple entry points to engage. The home feed surfaced puzzles, Ambassador Program banners, and Machine Learning content to spark curiosity beyond the immediate curriculum.
The onboarding flow used a clear "I AM A PARENT / I AM A STUDENT" role selector with friendly illustrations, establishing context before any content loaded. A profile switcher at the top let siblings swap between learner accounts seamlessly.
The Play section was the heart of daily engagement. It featured three tabs — Games, Challenges, and Leaderboard — with the Daily Quiz as the anchor habit. Children earned banana currency for correct answers (with 2x bonus for speed), progressed through Beginner, Whizard, and Expert skill tiers, and competed against real players from around the globe in real-time multiplayer STEM quizzes.
The quiz lobby showed "Players Joining... From around the globe" with real player avatars and a countdown timer, creating anticipation and social proof. The banana spend-to-play mechanic (2 bananas per game) created a deliberate economy that made each quiz feel valuable rather than disposable.
The "Create a New Challenge" flow empowered children to become quiz creators. They could name their challenge, select topics (Mathematics, General Knowledge, STEM Subjects, Mixed Bag), choose question types (True/False, Multimedia), and set the number of questions using an intuitive slider. The five complexity tiers — Easy, Medium, Hard, OMG!, and Pro Max — used playful face icons that made difficulty selection feel like picking a game mode.
Challenge creators could choose between Open to all, Only invited players, or Friends on the app — giving them control over competition scope. Quiz scheduling with date and time pickers, plus a "Today, Immediately" option, let children set up both impromptu and planned competitions.
The parent dashboard surfaced three critical actions: tracking their child's learning interests through brief surveys, booking free trial classes, and receiving personalised notifications. The interest survey ("We'd like to know more about Yatish's interests") used the child's actual name, making it feel like a conversation rather than a form.
The trial class booking flow was designed for maximum conversion — a clean, illustrated screen with date picker, time picker, and pre-filled contact number. The encouraging "Great decision!" headline and warm illustration reinforced the parent's choice, reducing booking abandonment.
These principles governed every design decision on Purple Tutor — from quiz flows to parent dashboards.
Purple Tutor's gamified, dual-audience approach delivered measurable results — ultimately leading to acquisition by Miko.
"At Purple Tutor, we believe that every child is a unique learner and therefore we put extra efforts to understand the learning needs of your child and create a customised learning path exclusively for him/her."
The platform's success in creating a genuinely engaging educational experience — where children voluntarily opened the app to play quizzes and challenge friends — was validated when Miko acquired Purple Tutor to integrate live coding classes, gamified learning, and AI-driven curriculum into their hardware ecosystem of companion robots serving children aged 5 to 12 across 140+ countries.
For me, this project reinforced a core belief: the best edtech products don't feel like education at all. When a child asks to "play Purple Tutor" instead of being told to "study coding," you've won the design challenge.
How co-creative collaboration with Purple Tutor's founders and educators produced a platform that made coding feel like play.
Designing for children is fundamentally different from designing for adults. Attention spans are shorter. Feedback must be immediate and rewarding. Navigation must be intuitive enough for a 5-year-old, yet rich enough for a 12-year-old. Every design decision had to pass a simple test: would a child choose this over YouTube?
My approach was rooted in co-creation with both audiences. We observed children using early prototypes, watching where they tapped instinctively, where they got stuck, and what made them smile. Parents reviewed dashboard concepts and told us exactly what "proof of learning" meant to them. The IIT Bombay educators ensured curriculum integrity was never sacrificed for gamification.
This project — executed through my consultancy Article8 — demonstrated a key Deep Dive Design principle: when you're designing for children, you're actually designing for two audiences at once. The child's delight and the parent's trust are inseparable.