Novi | Devpost

Inspiration

Learning has never been about a lack of information. If anything, we have too much of it.

Every day, students are surrounded by millions of videos, articles, explanations, and resources. Yet when we actually want to learn something, we often find ourselves jumping from one website to another, opening dozens of tabs, watching videos without knowing what to watch next, and eventually giving up.

I know this feeling personally.

Sometimes, I would become curious about something late at night and want to understand it immediately. I could find an answer in seconds—but finding the right answer, at the right level, in a way that actually helped me learn was much harder. The internet was incredibly good at giving me information, but surprisingly bad at helping me turn that information into understanding.

That was the idea behind Novi.

We wanted to build something that felt less like searching the internet and more like having a learning environment that grows with you. Instead of asking students to figure out what to learn, where to find it, and how to practice it on their own, Novi brings those pieces together into one personalized experience.

What inspired us most was a simple thought: curiosity should never be limited by not knowing where to start.

So we built Novi to turn the internet into a personalized classroom—one where students can discover something that interests them, ask questions when they get stuck, practice what they learned, and keep building their own path forward.

What We Learned

Building Novi taught us that creating a good learning experience is much harder than simply adding AI.

We had to think carefully about personalization, information overload, user experience, and how to make AI feel like a genuine learning companion rather than just another chatbot. We also learned how important it is to continuously test, rethink, and simplify our ideas.

How We Built It

We built Novi as an AI-powered learning platform centered around a personalized feed, AI tutoring, exploration, and interactive practice. Users can discover topics they care about, ask questions, explore related concepts, and test their understanding through quizzes and practice.

We focused heavily on creating a smooth experience where each step naturally leads to the next, rather than making students piece together their learning journey themselves.

Challenges

Our biggest challenge was turning a very broad idea—“make learning more personalized”—into something concrete and useful.

There were countless features we could have built, but every feature had to answer one question: does this genuinely help a student learn?

We had to repeatedly cut, redesign, and rethink parts of Novi. In the end, that process taught us that building something meaningful is not about building the most features. It is about understanding the problem deeply enough to know what truly matters.

Novi started with a frustration with the way we learn online. It became a project because we believed that learning could feel different.

And we hope Novi can make one small difference: when a student becomes curious about something, they don't have to wonder where to begin. They can simply begin.