I've spent 35 years in IT. Enterprise systems, software delivery, the usual. So when I decided to build a simple browser tool for teachers, I figured it would be a weekend project. How hard could a random letter generator be?
Turns out, building the tool was the easy part. Understanding how teachers actually use it — that's where things got interesting.
Why Teachers?
I didn't start with teachers in mind, honestly. I just noticed that most random letter tools online were either buried in ads, required signups, or looked like they were built in 2005. I thought I could do better. Clean interface, no registration, works on any device. Done.
But once the site went live, the search data told a different story. People weren't just looking for "random letter generator." They were searching for things like "letter picker for classroom," "alphabet spin wheel for kids," and "random letter for phonics." Teachers. It was mostly teachers.
That caught me off guard.
How They Actually Use It?
I started paying attention to the search queries and the feedback, and the use cases were way more creative than I expected.
ESL teachers were using it for warm-up exercises — generate a letter, students shout out words starting with that letter. Fast, simple, gets everyone talking in the first two minutes of class.
Primary school teachers were projecting it on the whiteboard for phonics practice. A kid spins the wheel, the letter appears, and the whole class practices the sound together. One teacher mentioned she does this every single morning.
Some were using it for games — Boggle-style challenges where you generate five random letters and students race to make words. Others used it for picking students (assign each kid a letter, generate one randomly — instant fair selection).
None of this was in my original plan. I built a random letter tool. Teachers turned it into a classroom engagement system.
What Non-Tech Users Taught Me
Here's the thing about building for developers — they'll figure out your UI even if it's rough. They'll read documentation. They'll tolerate a loading spinner.
Teachers won't. And they shouldn't have to.
I learned this the hard way through a few iterations:
No signup means no signup. I originally considered adding optional accounts for saving preferences. Bad idea. Teachers have enough logins. The moment you show a registration form, you lose half your audience. The tool works instantly — open the page, click generate, done.
Mobile isn't optional. I assumed most users would be on desktops. Wrong. Nearly 70% of my traffic comes from phones. Teachers are pulling this up on their personal phones, holding it up in front of the class, or casting it to a screen. The interface had to work perfectly at every screen size.
Fullscreen matters more than features. I added a full-screen mode almost as an afterthought. It turned out to be one of the most used features. When a teacher projects the tool on a whiteboard, they don't want browser chrome, tabs, or URL bars visible. They want a big letter on a clean screen that 30 kids can read from the back of the room.
Sound is a feature. I added text-to-speech so the tool announces the letter out loud. For phonics teachers working with 4 and 5-year-olds who can't read yet, hearing the letter is more important than seeing it. I never would have thought of this if I hadn't paid attention to who was actually using the tool.
The Uncomfortable Truth About "Simple" Tools
There's a bias in the developer community that simple tools aren't real engineering. A random letter generator? That's a weekend project. Where's the complexity?
But here's what I've realized after months of iterating: simplicity is the product. The wheel animation, the vowel/consonant filter, the multi-letter generation, the accessibility compliance, the PageSpeed optimization — all of that exists so a teacher in a busy classroom can tap one button and get what they need in under a second.
The complexity isn't in what the user sees. It's in everything they don't.
What's Next
I'm working on building this into a broader suite of classroom-friendly random generator tools. The random letter generator was tool number one, and the response from educators has been encouraging enough to keep going.
If you're a developer thinking about building for education — do it. Teachers are an incredibly underserved audience when it comes to simple, free, well-built tools. They don't need another LMS or a complex platform. Sometimes they just need a thing that works, instantly, on their phone, with no friction.
And if you're a teacher reading this on dev.to for some reason — thank you for showing me what this tool could be. I built it, but you taught me what it was for.
What's the most unexpected audience you've discovered for something you built? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
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