Product Management (Initiation and Launch) for Educational Gaming Platform
Background:
EyeClick is a market leader in interactive projection tools for education, entertainment and senior care. The company needed to create a new offering for the K12 educational market, which would broaden its reach in this market.
While the company traditioanly focused on highly engaging recreational activities for pre-schoolers, a demand for educational content and learning experiences emerged, a demand that competition was quick to respond to.
A major shift in the company's underlying technology was in place, in order to provide infrastructures supporting the new content and functionality. Further, new content needed to be created, at an order of magnitude faster.
An organizational shift was also required to be able to produce the vast amount of educational content, all in compliance to the curriculum of grades ranging from preschool, through K12, to middle school, catering to the general population as well as for special needs.
The Job:
As a product management consultant, my first task was to analyze the market, the competition, and understand the need from existing and prospective users.
A competitive analysis revealed opportunities for differentiation, that would be baked into the offering to create sustainable advantage. The next step was to define a product roadmap, ticking all the boxes needed for players (children), users (teachers), and other stakeholders (content creators, administrators) - at a national and international level, across educational systems and languages. I then used an an iterative process - in collaboration with the developers and UX specialists, to build a multi platform product suite, comprising of the following components:
- Game Console Interface: An interface allowing control of this unique interactive environment eliminating the need for a remote-control (Touch based, embedded android)
- CMS - Content Management System: A system and interface for teachers to browse educational games and activities, as well as a marketplace for user generated content. Additional instances of this CMS support content aggregation, monitoring, and global distribution (Web app)
- Control app allowing teachers to log-in to the system on site, in order to find their pre-prepared content, and to control media (wifi / bluetooth, media player, mobile app)
Team building and Content Operation:
EyeClick needed a new educational content team, one that can churn out hundreds (and eventually thousands) activities matching to the subject matters taught in classes from pre-school to junior high.
To that effect, I assembled and lead a content operation comprising of:
- Pedagogic content creators team
- Educational psychologist
- Game developers (Unity)
- Voice artists
- Translators
The pedagogic content creators team, comprised of certified teachers expert in all subject matter, set in motion to instill quizzes, exercises, and memory enhancing content - matching the curriculum and inserted with seasonal and heritage events to existing game templates. They were also creating new game templates using novel game mechanisms to enhance the gamification experience and enlarge the game catalogue. The company's game developers were responding to the requirements given to them with novel and engaging gameplays, characters, animations, and effects - creating engaging game templates that could support the new educational content.
A separate and equally important task at hand was to make sure games incentives work in favor of all students in the class, avoiding over-competitiveness, while encouraging participation, inclusion, and cooperation among fellow kids.
Finally, special attention was given to a host of activities aimed at the special need population, helping them to overcome emotional and learning difficulties. This was achieved through adaptation of game plans and difficulty levels, and finding alternative motivators and activations helping players to overcome difficulties, and enjoy play.
Testimonial:
Awarding us a 5 star review on clutch, Mr Ariel Almos, CEO EyeClick commented:
We were impressed with their dedication and willingness to adapt and find solutions to issues and challenges
Conclusion:
It's been an intensive, challenging, and highly educational (pun intended) experience, to be able to help EyeClick propel through this massive effort, and I thank the company's team, as well as the team members I assembled for this task. Enjoyed this tremendously!
Do you have a new product in the works? Do you want to experience a similar boost, bringing visionary, as well as execution capabilities?
Come talk to us!