Custom UI layout builder for video editing classrooms

When a college or bootcamp instructor teaches video editing, they face a specific problem nobody has solved cleanly: students open the software and immediately complain about what one user described as 'too many windows' and 'the interface clashes with usual look and feel' — meaning the default layout actively fights learning. Instructors spend the first class session just walking students through rearranging panels, and then half the class has a layout that looks nothing like the instructor's screen, making it impossible to say 'click the button on the left' without three students saying they don't see it.

This persists because the software vendors don't sell to instructors in a meaningful way — the institutional license is purchased by IT or an academic department head, not the instructor who teaches with it every week. The instructor's complaints never reach a product team with budget authority. And building a 'simplified classroom mode' would require the vendors to acknowledge that their default UI is too complex, which they won't do publicly.

What instructors actually need is the ability to define a named workspace layout — which panels are visible, where they sit, what size — and push that layout to every student's install with one link, so that on day one every screen looks identical. Users even asked for this directly: 'They need to give options to customise the user interface.' The recurring need is real: every new cohort, every new semester, every new student who reinstalls the software requires the same reset. Instructors who run multiple sections a year hit this problem three or four times annually, and it costs them 30–60 minutes of class time every single time.

What to build

Build a desktop companion app for Premiere Pro that lets an instructor export a named workspace configuration as a shareable URL, and lets students apply it in one click — overwriting their current panel layout to match the instructor's exactly, with a reset-to-instructor button available throughout the course.

Where to start

Start with one bootcamp that runs monthly cohorts — the recurring new-cohort problem means they'll pay for a tool that works reliably even if it's narrow, and a single bootcamp partner gives you a reference customer to approach every other coding or creative bootcamp in the same network.

The hard part

Workspace configuration in Premiere Pro is stored in local application files whose format Adobe can change without notice, making the sync mechanism fragile and requiring ongoing maintenance with each major Adobe release.

How it makes money

Annual license per institution or bootcamp, priced per instructor seat with unlimited students — institutions pay once per school year, making renewals predictable and tied to the academic calendar.