How did we Start? The Engineering Journey Behind studiis

When we set out to build studiis, we had a simple yet ambitious goal: to create a platform that makes studying smarter, more structured and more engaging. Like many engineering journeys, ours started with a mix of curiosity, necessity, and a drive to solve a real problem—because we, too, are students navigating the challenges of learning.

The First Steps: Identifying the Problem

As students ourselves, we felt the struggle firsthand. Juggling multiple subjects, deadlines and study resources often felt overwhelming. Traditional study methods weren't keeping up with the digital age. We saw fragmented tools—note-taking apps, calendar schedulers, and habit trackers—all serving a purpose but lacking a unified experience, packed with ads, or simply too expensive for students like us. We asked ourselves: What if we could bring everything together in one seamless, intelligent platform?

Pros

Unified experience for studying
No ads, built for students
Affordable and accessible

Cons

Building from scratch takes time
Requires continuous iteration
Scalability challenges

Building the Core Infrastructure

From day one, we focused on scalability and flexibility. We chose Next.js for our frontend, ensuring a smooth user experience with server-side rendering (SSR) and static generation where needed, for example, this blog page. On the backend, we leveraged Hono as our web framework and Drizzle for database interactions, ensuring efficient data handling and easy integration with different services, as well as making our life working with database migrations easier.

To maintain responsiveness and real-time updates, we integrated Redis as a caching layer, optimizing performance for study session tracking and analytics processing.

By combining modern frameworks, we built a system that is both scalable and performant.

Crafting the Learning Experience

We didn't just want to build another study tool; we wanted to create an intuitive system that adapts to users’ learning styles—because we needed that ourselves. This led us to explore:

Gamification elements

Encouraging engagement through progress tracking, streaks, and achievements.

Seamless cross-device sync

Ensuring users can start on their laptop and continue on their phone without missing a beat.

AI-powered recommendations

And yes, we also looked into integrating AI into studiis—but psst, just leave your eyes open on our social media 👀

Continuous Improvement & Future Plans

Our engineering team follows a hybrid caching strategy, allowing fast data retrieval without compromising on accuracy. We also use React Query to handle client-side data fetching efficiently. Looking ahead, we're planning to introduce collaborative study rooms, more integrations, and advanced analytics to help users understand their learning patterns better.

We are always improving studiis based on feedback and technological advancements. Stay tuned!

At studiis, our engineering philosophy is simple: build with purpose, scale with efficiency, and always prioritize the user experience. And as students ourselves, we're constantly learning—both from our studies and from building studiis. Our journey is just beginning, and we're excited about what's next!

Want to be part of the journey? We're always looking for innovative minds to join us. Stay tuned for more insights from our engineering team!