The Client
Islands of Maths is an edtech company from the north of Sweden on a mission to make math fun and relevant for anyone, anywhere in the world! Their focus is four simple visual principles that is the basis of all mathematical understanding and education. While aiming to change the way math is being taught and looked upon in the world. The company was founded in 2017 and went bankrupt in 2023, but was still trying to get funding to continue when I joined the team.
The problem
The cofounders, a mathematician and a designer had built a vertical slice demo and tested on 15 teenagers and some maths teachers. I came in to help pivot the the game once it was clear that the game had potential but more work needed to be done to test the principles in practice.
My role
Map game concepts against maths curriculum.
Build and run cocreation workshops to test method in schools with teachers.
Design math activities to supplement student learning using method in preparation for the national test.
screenshot from my design of workshop material
Output
I started by pivoting the game’s business model to an impact model to identify the theory of change and define what the game aims to achieve.
I then mapped out the principles against the maths curriculum for middle school and decided to test it on 9th grade students at risk of failing the national test.
my design for the mattecentrum workshop invitation
Outcome
We had hoped to secure funding and collaboration with schools and institutions for building upon the concepts. We where able to garner interest but as the company had already gone bankrupt when I joined we were operating on a very lean budget and ran out of resources to continue further with the project