Josh Olsen
Rebuilding Varsity Tutors' live classroom — cover
Rebuilding Varsity Tutors' live classroom as an AI-ready, reliable core product.
CompanyNerdyRoleLead Designer (sole designer, contributed production code)

The legacy platform was riddled with tech debt and reliability issues, leaving unsatisfied customers and an inability to rapidly innovate.

As sole designer, I led the rebuild from early discovery to 100% rollout on a new stack. I owned experience architecture, grounded decisions in real learner and tutor feedback, and wrote production code using AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code) to ship faster. Turnaround was aggressive: alpha to 50 tutors in 1 week, beta at 10% in 3 weeks, full rollout in 2.5 months.

Impact
AV errors-50%Cost per call-40%Tutors rated new platform same or better75%Students rated new platform same or better85%
The upgrades are incredible and greatly appreciated. I don't think I'd change anything. My sessions genuinely run very smoothly.
Tutor survey feedback
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