Small pieces,
placed with care.

The name

A tessera is a small tile — the cube of stone or glass a Roman craftsman set into a mosaic. On its own it is a fragment, easy to dismiss. Laid beside enough others, with care, it becomes a picture that outlives everyone who worked on it.

The word carried a second meaning. A tessera was also a token: a small marked piece given as proof of identity, of membership, of a debt settled. Something you could hand over to show that a thing was true.

Both meanings describe what we are trying to make. Learning accumulates from small pieces. Assessment is the token that proves it happened. Educational technology sits between the two, and it is only worth anything if both halves hold.

What that means in practice

Finish the piece

A tile that is nearly cut is useless. We would rather ship one feature that is genuinely complete — properly marked, properly tested, working offline on a slow phone — than a wider product where every part is provisional.

Accuracy before interface

An app that looks excellent and marks badly has done a learner active harm: it has told them they are ready when they are not. The content and the marking come first, and they are written by people who teach the subject and have marked the real thing.

Respect the learner's hour

Study time is the scarcest thing a learner has. We measure a feature by whether it makes an hour of study count for more, not by whether it increases time in the app. There are no streaks designed to guilt anyone into opening a phone.

Build so the whole can be trusted

Scores, bands and progress are claims about a person. We hold them to the standard of the examination they are meant to predict, and we say plainly when a result is an estimate rather than a measurement.

Who we are

Tessera Learning Limited (聚知教育有限公司) is a small, family-founded company registered in Hong Kong.