An AI lesson planner for teachers. Founded, designed, and shipped to V1: product, brand, and partner materials.
Founder & Designer · 2023–2024
BrightBook
Founder
Product Design
Brand Identity
An AI lesson planner for teachers. I founded it, designed the product and the brand, and took it from an idea to a shipped V1 with real users.
Timeline
2023–2024 · idea to shipped V1
My ownership
UI/UX · brand · materials · operations
Product stage
V1 shipped to early users and testers
01 Overview
BrightBook helped teachers build and organize lesson plans, with AI doing the first draft. I led design on the product and on everything public-facing.
At a company that early, design meant more than screens. I did the brand system, the decks, the partner materials, and a fair share of the operational work that turns an idea into something you can actually ship.
02 The product
Lesson planning is the work of turning goals and materials into something you can stand up and teach from. Most of it happens in documents that go stale the moment anything changes. BrightBook kept the plan in one place and kept it editable.
Lesson-planning interface from the web-app
03 Design ownership
01
Product experience
I designed the interface and the flow through the core planning workflow, from an empty state to a plan a teacher could actually take into a classroom.
02
One recognizable brand
The same identity ran through the app, the decks, the documentation, and everything that went out to partners.
03
Founder-level execution
I also did the unglamorous part: making calls, explaining the product to people, and pushing V1 out the door.
04 Brand system
The open-book mark says what the product is before anyone reads a word. Bright blue and a plain visual language kept it optimistic without going childish, which matters when you're asking teachers to trust it with their prep.
Combination mark
Logo mark
Primary #0066CC
Secondary #0099FF
Base 800 Base 100 #111827 #F4F7FA
Base 100 Base 800 #E3E4EB #374151 Brand palette
Brand guideline documentation
05 Industry perspective
At the 2024 WLSA Global Educators Conference at NYU Shanghai, I sat on a panel about the future of education and what AI was going to do to it. Building BrightBook meant I could talk about shipping something to teachers rather than about the idea of it.
WLSA GEC 2024 · NYU Shanghai
In conversation at the conference
06 Outcome
BrightBook shipped V1 and got in front of real users and testers. It never made meaningful money. It did win $10,000 through Boston University’s innovation pathway accelerator.
5
continents reached by the lesson planner.
1k+
unique lesson plans generated by teachers using it.
$10k
awarded through Boston University’s innovation pathway.
07 Reflection
BrightBook was not the company I set out to build. It was a real product that real teachers used, and it taught me how little separation there is between design, communication, and operations when you’re building something this early.
Back to alexwil.com — this site is an interactive desktop and needs JavaScript for the full experience.
