// her ideas, shaped together

Zoey's Lab

The ideas here are an eight-year-old's. She works out what an app should do and how it ought to feel, and we shape it together until it runs. Everything climbs the same ladder: an idea, then a prototype, then a polished app. Four have reached the top. Each one opens on a home of picture doors, so a child can find their way in without reading — all free, all work offline once installed, and none has ads, tracking, or an account to make.

// polished — ready to play

Huely a colour lab

Magenta and yellow make red. Red, green and blue light make white.

Drip ink into a beaker and Huely — a little drop with a face — names what you made and wears the colour. Then switch the lights off and cross beams that add up instead of darkening. 58 quests, 76 colours the world named, palettes from your own photos, and a jar that fills stripe by stripe.

Open Huely →

graduated from bench school ✦ 31 July 2026

Ditty a Morse code lab

Tap for a dit, hold for a dah — and Ditty reads it back.

Every mark is drawn as long as you held it, so the rhythm that makes Morse readable is something you can see before anyone explains it. Forty letters in the order Morse is really taught, a room that sends you a letter to recognise by ear, a playable alphabet, and the stories from 1838 to SOS.

Open Ditty →

graduated from bench school ✦ 31 July 2026

Tessa a shape lab

Drag a point into a line, a square, a cube — and one more drag.

Every shape is the shape below it, dragged, all the way to the tesseract. Draw shapes that get named and scored, raise prisms by hand, fold six squares into a cube (there are exactly 11 ways), find the hexagon hiding inside every cube, and meet 56 shapes, 19 of them in true 3D — up to a Klein bottle that has to pass through itself.

Open Tessa →

graduated from bench school ✦ 1 August 2026

Numa a math lab

Paint a hundred chart, and the primes are what nothing could paint.

A times-table wheel draws hearts from straight lines, numbers keep secret tricks, and a shelf of twelve discoveries waits to be found by playing. Its measuring wing asks how many megametres make an au. Its voice is the harmonic series: counting by three plays the third harmonic of one string.

Open Numa →

graduated from bench school ✦ 4 November 2026

// prototypes — at bench school

What is Bench School?

Bench School is where our prototypes learn. An app joins as soon as it can be played, but it is still young: some rooms are missing, some things wobble, and Zoey keeps finding what to fix. It learns here — played, fixed, played again — until it is ready to stand on its own. Then it graduates and moves up to the polished apps.

In class now: Lilt, Orbi, Novi, Cella, Orika and Petra.

Lilt a music lab · on the bench

A few dots, a tune that's yours. Tap notes onto a paper roll and a music box plays it round and round; keep the tunes you love in a drawer, strum the box's comb with as many fingers as you like, try instruments sorted by what shakes, and watch a sound's wave. It also tunes a violin, reads every sign on a page of sheet music from a photo or a PDF, keeps a shelf of 55 instruments to look up, and plays ear games with stars to win, and has a blank staff to write music of your own on. Nine rooms — Compose, Instruments, Waves, Ear, Metronome, Tune, Read, Write, Learn — and no lessons, just listening.

Try Lilt →

playable prototype ✦

Orbi a space lab · on the bench

Farther means slower.

Drag your own world out from the Sun and watch its year grow longer — Kepler's rule, which every planet keeps. Find your age on Mercury, jump nearly two metres on the Moon, and watch why a day on Mercury lasts two of its years.

Try Orbi →

playable prototype ✦

Novi a species lab · on the bench

Who's out there?

Most living things have no name yet. Meet the species named in the last few years, from a beetle called Luffy to a spider dressed as a fungus. Work out what they are with a real yes-or-no key, name a species of your own, and open a cabinet that is three quarters empty.

Try Novi →

playable prototype ✦

Cella a cell lab · on the bench

You were once one cell.

Start as a single fertilised egg and choose, split by split, what it becomes: 32 kinds of cell at the tips of the tree. Double one cell into a whole body in 45 splits, and zoom a true-to-scale microscope down to a virus.

Try Cella →

playable prototype ✦

Orika an origami lab · on the bench

One square, many things.

Fold twenty-six models, from a frog face, a house and a T-shirt to a goldfish, a samurai helmet and the crane, one step at a time: watch each fold swing over, repeat it, or drag it by hand. Learn the signs every origami diagram uses, unfold any model to see its creases, and fold a sheet in half 42 times to reach the Moon.

Try Orika →

playable prototype ✦

Petra a gem lab · on the bench

A ruby and a sapphire are the same stone.

A drawer of 23 stones to look up: what each is made of, where its colour comes from, and how hard it is from talc to diamond. Scratch them on Mohs's ladder, follow light bouncing inside a cut stone, weigh two the same size, and add a pinch of chromium to clear corundum to make a ruby.

Try Petra →

playable prototype ✦

// ideas — sparks waiting for the bench

History a time lab

One long ribbon of time you can pinch from a single day to a million years. Where do the pyramids sit, the dinosaurs, the day you were born?

still a spark ✦ not started

Places a map lab

Peel a globe flat and watch the countries stretch. How big is Greenland really, and where in the world is it morning right now?

still a spark ✦ not started

Language a word lab

The same thing in English, 日本語 and 中文 — and characters built from pieces like Lego, where 木 is a tree and 林 is a wood.

still a spark ✦ not started

Wind a weather lab

Why does air move at all? Warm air rises, cool air rushes in. Make a sea breeze, fly a kite, and spin a pinwheel faster.

still a spark ✦ not started

Braille a touch lab

Six dots in a little cell, raised or flat: that makes 64 patterns, enough for every letter. Read with your fingertips, and meet Louis Braille, who worked it out as a teenager.

still a spark ✦ not started

Family a family lab

Draw your family tree: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling and see how many people it took to make you.

still a spark ✦ not started

For parents and teachers: everything runs in the browser and installs to a home screen. Progress stays on the device. Photos never leave it. English, 日本語 and 中文 throughout. No ads, no analytics, no sign-in for children — ever.