Not a Guru

Design for Doubt

Talk to Not a Guru.

Ask badly worded questions. Rant about your feedback.

Drop your mess in the chatbox. It’s listening.

There’s a moment in every design project when things fall apart. The research stops making sense. The user is abstract. The wireframes look like nonsense. You doubt the brief, the mentor, the whole discipline. And somewhere in the middle of all this, you just need to talk to someone. Not to be evaluated. Not to be corrected. Just heard.

That’s where Not a Guru comes in.

The Problem with the ‘All-Knowing Mentor’

Design education loves the myth of the expert. The ‘guru’ figure. The one who has the answers, the framework, the clarity. We’ve inherited this from both design's colonial lineages and gurukul-style teaching. It’s tidy. But it’s not real.

Real design is messy. It’s political. Situated. Uncertain. It resists neat solutions. Especially when you’re working on systems that impact people’s lives — public transport, community health, craft ecologies, algorithms, and land. In those moments, you don’t need a guru. You need a guide who can answer your questions.

Not a Guru is our response to that need.

What It Is

It’s a conversational bot. Built on critical design values. It speaks in British English. But in a tone that sounds like a peer, not a professor. It won’t tell you your font size. It will ask you why you think your interface matters. It’s trained to work with ambiguity. To notice when you’re lost. To reflect, not dictate.

Students can use it anytime — during late-night drafting, feedback loops, ideation blocks, or moments of existential panic. It reads the project context before responding. It asks more than it answers. It doesn't push you toward “deliverables.” It pulls you back to your questions.

What It Isn’t

It’s not a productivity machine. It won’t give you a moodboard in 5 seconds. It doesn’t do your job. It helps you think about your job.

Most AI tools in education are extractive. They encourage speed, replication, and mimicry. They strip the design of its politics, reduce it to UI gloss and presentation decks. Not a Guru resists that. It’s slow on purpose. It makes you reflect. Because we believe thinking is the work.

We built Not a Guru as a design partner that holds space for uncertainty. It doesn’t ask you to "solve problems." It asks you to reframe them. It talks to you like someone who knows what it’s like to start with nothing but a question and a headache. And it stays with you, through the chaos, without pretending it knows where you’ll end up.

We’re not launching a tool. We’re offering a presence. A quiet, sharp, non-judgmental friend. The kind every thinking student deserves.

Rahul Bhattacharya

Designer| Educator|Curator