Turning 30 years of classroom expertise into an exercise platform
About the client
Eureka is a school in Leuven assisting children with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia. During their 30+ years of existence, they have developed successful methodologies and tools allowing these children to successfully integrate back into the regular educational system.
The challenge
We were tasked with translating their didactic experience into a digital platform for children aged 6-14, leveraging machine learning techniques to construct optimal education paths and tap into children’s strengths while overcoming their difficulties.
Our approach
We started off with classroom visits to fully understand how Eureka is helping children in the real world. In order to map this into a digital product, we pulled out every page from our playbook from product design to architecture, followed by dedicated software engineering activities.
With support of
Product definition
A child-friendly user experience for optimal online learning
We're bringing all actors relevant to a child's learning trajectory together online: children, parents, teachers, speech therapists and other coaches. Rather than starting from a predefined set of learning objectives, CleverKids adapts to the actual abilities of the child making sure they will always be practicing at the correct level and pace for maximum motivation.
With these guiding principles in mind, we stepped to the drawing board
Design track
We kickstarted a design track in order to fully conceptualise the platform in a clickable prototype that could be validated by all user audiences. We used the Eureka school as a testing playground to see how children would interact with the interfaces.
Architecture track
On the architectural side we opted for a scalable architecture with Google Cloud Platform. On peak hours during or right after school, the platform should be able to deal with significant user and data volumes.
Product development
An effective software delivery process
We set up a dedicated product development team alongside a strong product owner from Eureka. We decided to capture user feedback early on, which also meant needing to keep the roadmap flexible as we moved along. We turned the roadmap into product development sprints with scrum routines as a basis: planning sessions, daily standups and demos at the end of each sprint.
CleverKids is set up as a SaaS product on top of Google Cloud infrastructure. We chose a combination of Node/TS to build REST APIs and React for the front-end application. Automated pipelines were set up with a high test coverage to be able to releases frequently yet reliably.
Foundations to scale
Growing the platform across Europe
After a successful validation period, the platform was opened up to a broader audience with a low-entry usage based pricing model. We continue to support Eureka in the further Benelux and European rollout on key operational dimensions: setting up customer success activities, billing procedures, legal documentation, and more to give the product every fighting chance to find true product-market fit.
Following many ideation and formalization sessions, we chose Panenco as the end-to-end product development partner for the CleverKids platform. Panenco truly empathized with our ambition to spread our proven methodologies and tools across the educational system. They provided all the skills and knowhow needed to be successful in our mission.
Anny Cooreman
Founder of Eureka
In summary
Over the past 30 years our client - Eureka - built a truly unique approach to help gifted children reach their full learning potential. We embarked on an exciting journey to build the digital equivalent.
We’re truly proud of the impact CleverKids is having on individual lives and the education system as a whole. Now it’s time to expand further across Europe. We’ll be happy to keep supporting every step of the way!
Let's build!
Are you looking for an entrepreneurial digital partner?
Reach out to hello@panenco.com.
