PrepLadder
A NEET PG prep app, designed for a doctor who studies in the gaps.
EdTech
Mobile
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
2020 to 2022
team
Two designers
platform
Mobile
PrepLadder is how Indian doctors prepare for NEET PG, the exam that decides whether you specialise or spend another year trying. The student is a medical graduate, often on hospital shifts, studying in whatever time the ward leaves her.
I joined the month Unacademy acquired the company. Bipin Sharma and I rebuilt the app on Unacademy's design system, in one shared handoff file. We means both of us. I means me, and I use it where the call was mine.
Five problems, in short
Lectures and QBanks happen in different hours, so the app splits by context, not by content type.
Exam prep gives no feedback for a year, so progress moves to the front, and a calendar replaces a counter.
NEET PG punishes guessing, so guesses and skips become states the student can review.
The paying student leaves quietly, so her home reports what she has done instead of selling to her.
A borrowed design system carries someone else's user, so we held the line where the product's shape was at stake.
The screens matter, but each one below starts with the student, not the screen.
1. A lecture and a QBank don't happen in the same hour
Structuring the app around when people study, not what we sell
A lecture is forty minutes, headphones, a chair. A QBank is ten questions in the queue outside an OPD. They need different attention, happen in different places, and students rarely switch between them mid-session.
The app didn't know that. Videos and QBanks sat in one list per subject, separated by filter chips: All · Free · Videos · QBanks · Completed. That's how a content team sees a subject, as a bundle of assets. For a student, it meant filtering out what she didn't want, every time, in every subject.
Tabs by context
Home · Videos · QBanks · Tests · Me. Videos and QBanks each get their own subject list, built for one mode: durations on one, question counts on the other. Tests stand apart again, because they are timed and taken sitting down.
Once the split was made, the chips disappeared. So did a twelve-item settings menu, because every item in it finally had a natural home.
Build for the exam that exists
Early on, we designed match-the-following and multiple true/false question types. Then I checked them against the exam.
NEET PG doesn't ask them. It is single best answer, four options, +4 and -1. A question type the exam doesn't use trains the wrong muscle. Seventy-odd screens went to a discard page, and I left that page visible in the file so nobody would revive them.
2. Effort you can't feel
Gamification, and the difference between a counter and a calendar
The cruelty of exam prep is that the feedback loop is a year long. You study for months, and the only verdict is the exam. Every day looks like the last.
The app had rewards, but they lived under Profile, in a sub-tab called Achievements. Progress was something you went looking for, which is the opposite of what progress is for.
A ledger, not a profile
I rebuilt the Me tab to read top to bottom: today, consistency, lifetime, rewards. Today's watch minutes, modules, MCQs and tests come first. Then streaks with a calendar beneath, then lifetime progress by subject, then stars, hats and trophies.
Rewards come last on purpose. A badge without the ledger behind it is a sticker.
A calendar forgives. A counter doesn't.
A streak counter has one failure mode. Miss a day and it says zero, and three weeks of work vanish in one Wednesday. The student who most needs encouragement is exactly the one who just missed a day.
So I put a calendar under the counter: three weeks as rows of ticks. Miss Wednesday and Wednesday is a gap, but the nineteen ticks around it stay. Same data, opposite feeling. The counter stays for people who like a number. The calendar does the work.
Three currencies for three habits
One badge can't reward three behaviours. Stars reward QBank completion, which is practice. Hats reward learning minutes, which is time. Trophies reward taking a subject's QBank to 90%, which is depth.
A student who watches everything and practises nothing ends up with hats and no stars, and sees it on one screen. The rewards diagnose as much as they reward.
Unearned rewards appear grey and padlocked, with the condition underneath. Hiding them would look cleaner. But a row of locked hats reading 10k learning minutes is a to-do list dressed as a trophy case, and that is more useful than clean.
Three friends, not a leaderboard
You can add three friends. Their streaks appear on your Me tab, and yours on theirs.
A leaderboard of thirteen thousand strangers rewards the top hundred and tells everyone else they're losing. Three people you know isn't competition; it's being seen. You don't skip Thursday if Anuj can see Thursday.
Referrals pay in plan validity rather than credits. The referrer is a student who wants more time, so we give her time.
One reward inside the work
Three correct answers in a row mid-QBank, and a banner drops (GREAT DOCTOR · 3 correct answers in a row), then leaves. It is the only reward that fires where the studying happens, not in the tab about studying.
3. The exam punishes guessing. The app should notice.
Strategy states in the QBank
NEET PG gives +4 for a right answer and -1 for a wrong one. That arithmetic makes guessing and skipping strategic, though most quiz apps treat both as noise.
Guesses get their own column
Students can flag an answer as a guess during a test, so results report Correct Guesses separately from correct answers.
Two students with the same score can have opposite problems. One knows the material and guesses badly. The other guesses well and knows less than she thinks. Fold the guesses in and they look identical. Pull them out and each knows what to fix.
Missed is a decision
With negative marking, a blank is a choice, not a lapse. The solution view has three states: correct, wrong, and you missed this question. A skip becomes reviewable as the decision it was.
The whole module before the weak spots
Students can practise only incorrect or bookmarked questions, but only after finishing the QBank. Cherry-picking weak spots before seeing the module is how people convince themselves they've covered a topic. The rule is a small inconvenience that protects against a large one.
What we didn't touch
The solution view already showed what share of students picked each option, linked treasures in the explanation, and cited the textbook down to the edition. We gave it the new visual system and left the thinking alone. Knowing what not to redesign is part of the job.
4. The paying student is the one who leaves quietly
A home page that reports instead of sells
The home screen opened with Want to achieve your dream seat? Enroll now. It showed that to everyone, including the doctor two years into a paid plan. Every morning, she opened the app to a pitch for something she already owned.
There was one home because the business had one funnel. But the student who has already paid is the one who doesn't renew, and home was our only daily touchpoint with her.
Three homes
I split home by who is opening it. Free users get the pitch. Students with half-finished profiles get asked to finish. Premium users get a ledger: videos completed, tests completed, QBanks as a ring (47 of 815), and current streak next to longest.
Nothing on the premium home asks for money. It shows what the money bought. That is the renewal argument, made daily, without making it.
5. Someone else's system has someone else's user in it
Building for a doctor with parts made for a teenager
Unacademy's design system gave us type, colour, spacing, components and speed. We could build a screen in an afternoon.
It also gave us help@unacademy.com in the OTP error state, a plan tier called Iconic, and onboarding cards about booking live mentor sessions. All of it came attached to the components we borrowed. Those leaks were the visible symptom.
The invisible one was the user. The system was built for a seventeen-year-old doing JEE with live classes. Ours was a twenty-six-year-old doctor on a night shift with a recorded lecture and a QBank. Every borrowed component carried a small opinion about who was holding the phone, and the opinion was wrong.
We held the line where the product's shape was at stake:
Faculty faces on the subject list, because students choose teachers, not subjects.
Treasure numbers as a first-class search key, because students quote #6798 to each other like a page reference.
Hats and stars, because no Unacademy component rewarded the habits this exam needs.
What happened
It shipped. Group Study went out in August 2021. You add up to three friends and see each other's streaks, stars and trophies. Achievements & Stats landed in the Me tab in February 2022, with streaks and a learning timeline, lifetime progress by subject, coloured stars for working through a QBank, and the trophy at 90%.
Both announcements are still on PrepLadder's site, so you don't have to take my word for it.
What I'd fix
We measured coverage, not recall. Every star and trophy is a percentage completed. None asks whether the material stuck. The company later rebuilt its product around retention, with spaced repetition and flashcards. The rewards I designed pointed at the wrong number.
Notes delivery went to the bottom of the file. Physical notes shipped in batches, and slow delivery is still a top complaint in reviews years later. Design effort and student importance aren't the same axis, and we sorted by the wrong one.
No border on the borrowed system. We never wrote down which parts were Unacademy's and which were ours. One page saying this stays PrepLadder would have caught most of the leaks.
The thread
A doctor studying for NEET PG doesn't have hours. She has gaps: between rounds, on the bus, after a shift. Every decision here is about fitting into those gaps and proving, day by day, that they add up.
Nobody needs another badge. They need to open the app on a bad day and see nineteen ticks and one gap.
