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While looking for design opportunities, we realised the real gap wasn't skill. It was experience.
As a design student trying to find freelance work and internships, the same problem kept coming up. Every platform wanted experience, but there was no structured way to build it. Peers shared the same frustration. Online, designers talked about the difficulty of landing early work not because their craft was weak, but because they had no track record of working with real clients. That gap between education and professional readiness became the foundation for AVTR.
We looked at the platforms designers were already using, and what they were getting wrong.
To understand what AVTR needed to be, we studied where emerging designers were currently going to find work, build credibility, and learn the professional side of design.
Behance
Great for showcasing finished work.
No way to demonstrate communication or process.Glassdoor
Useful for researching companies.
Passive, with no way to build readiness.Internshala
Connects students to opportunities.
Does not help them practise or prove capability.Fiverr
Gives access to real clients immediately.
No preparation, making early mistakes high-risk.
Three gaps kept coming up across every platform we studied.
The Pricing Problem
Emerging designers had no benchmark for what to charge. Without experience or a track record, pricing felt like guesswork, and undercharging became the default.The Communication Gap
None of the platforms prepared designers for the reality of working with clients, handling vague briefs, managing revisions, pushing back professionally, or communicating decisions clearly.The Reliability Gap
Portfolios showed what designers could make. Nothing showed whether they could be trusted to deliver, consistently, professionally, on time.
How do you give designers real-world experience before they've had real-world experience?
The challenge was not building another portfolio platform or job board. The real problem was the absence of a safe environment to practise the non-design side of design, client communication, feedback management, and professional discipline. AVTR needed to simulate that environment in a way that felt real enough to build genuine skill, and produce a credible output that employers and educators could actually trust.
Simulate the client. Track the designer. Make the result mean something.
AVTR uses AI-powered client simulations to place designers in realistic project scenarios, with briefs, feedback, revision requests, and professional expectations that mirror what a real client relationship looks like. Designers practise responding, communicating, and delivering in a consequence-free environment before it matters.
Every simulation contributes to a Reliability Score, a verified dashboard and rating system that tracks consistency, responsiveness, and professionalism over time. Rather than a portfolio that only shows finished work, the Reliability Score shows how a designer works. That is the signal employers actually want, and the credential AVTR was built to produce.
Designing a complex product solo, from scratch, in software I was still learning.
The UI design was the most demanding part of this project. Building a platform with a simulation environment, a scoring dashboard, and a full brand identity, largely independently and while learning the design software at the same time, meant there was no room to wait until the tools felt comfortable. The work had to happen while the learning was still happening.
The scoring dashboard was the hardest screen to get right. A Reliability Score only means something if the user understands what drives it. Too much information upfront and it becomes noise. Too little and it feels arbitrary. The solution was progressive disclosure: a clear, simple primary view that layers into detail on demand.
Designing the simulation flow meant working without templates or precedents to reference. Every screen had to be thought through from the ground up. What does the user need at this moment, what do they need to do, and how does this connect to what comes next? Working through those questions independently, under constraint, produced the sharpest UX thinking of the entire project.
