Brainologi

The purpose of Brainologi is to improve the life outcome of children in India, by teaching children between the age of 5-12 years the process of problem solving. Our goal is to enable academic improvement as well as give them the confidence to develop an attitude of problem solving. Complex problem solving skills have a direct impact on employability and economic advancement. And our mission is that children across social strata, even those without the advantage of private education or enabled by highly educated parents, are able to develop these core skills.

We do this through learning products, in the form of learning books supported by a digital learning-assistance app,  that can be easily used at home, even in the absence of a caregiver.  We cover a range of subjects, such as Logic & Reasoning, Data Handling and Algorithm Writing in our products, that build skills for a prosperous future.

We are a commercial venture in the early education space. I, the team lead, is also the founder, CEO of this venture. As the CEO, I am responsible for the product as well as the revenue. Thus, I am responsible not only for the efficacy of the final product, but the onus is also on me  to establish the efficacy to my paying customers. I am supported by an able team, including my co-founder,  who has 3 decades of experience in leadership roles in early education. 

Our mission is to positively impact every child who comes in contact with our products. And we want to do this in a manner in which the evidence of  learning outcomes is easily available. Lack of such evidence can lead to market failure. Thus the efficacy of our product is very important to the founding team. This has meant that, as a team we spend a minimum of 8-10 hours every week on improving our product and designing new content. For us allotting time towards product improvement and establishing its efficacy is core to our mission. Thus me and my team will be more than available for this project.

Teaching problem solving skills through products that enable disruption free, independent learning in children.

Every child finds some problems overwhelming. For some it could be Math, for others it could be Sciences or Languages. However a lot of academic (and life’s hurdles) can be crossed by applying simple methods or techniques of problem solving. It could be something as simple as breaking a problem into smaller parts or separating facts from opinions. Our educational systems teach our children many things, but curiously misses on giving them simple problem solving tools that underpins academic and life outcomes. At Brainologi, we want to enable children to learn these skills, and  to do this independently. 

A big problem with learning at home is the non-reliable availability of a skilled caregiver. In most cases mothers. This unavailability could be due to being at work or the caregiver being non-skilled or even illiterate. But the fact remains that young children need assistance while learning. This stems not only from not knowing what to do if they are stuck but also the rapid loss of motivation when unable to solve something. 

While our learning content  focuses on equipping children with these kind of tools, the overall solution provides need based intervention to support the learning journey. Through the learning app, we aim to help the child continue the learning journey in the absence of a caregiver or if the caregiver is not equipped to provide the right input. 

Our solution has 2 parts. The learning content and  the delivery. The learning content comprises activities in Logic, Reasoning, Spatial Skills, Data Handling, Algorithm Writing and so on provided through activity-based books.  This is future looking content, teaching children how to work on complex problems in these areas. This content has been developed in house, and is age-appropriate.

The delivery includes an on-demand learning app. When a child encounters a problem, a simple QR based support aims to provide assistance on the page where the child has encountered the problem. Thus if a child faces a problem, such as inability to read or understanding the problem on the page, simply by scanning the QR code on that page, the child can seek assistance is reading or solving a problem. This is to ensure continuity in the absence of a caregiver. It also ensures that a child is receiving input in the area that they specifically need. The kind of problems children get stuck on may be different. We find that assuming all children will have the same type of learning challenge and covering for all those grounds in a linear manner, leads to them switching off from the learning product. 

We have conducted usability studies in around 20 households. We gave our products to families. With children, we used observation method, wherein the child was observed while using the product. We observed for data such as , how long do they use, do they want to come back to it? Do they talk about the product, and so on. 

With parents, we had conducted formal interviews to take their feedback. We asked them for feedback on various parameters such as their view on the product design, did they think their child liked it, did they observe any improvement in their child, etc. 

We tested a prototype of our products in households.During our testing, we found a number of challenges. One of our most important observations is the need to establish the efficacy of our product to the buyer. While our learning app did have a built in score system that was available to the parents, however this score in itself is not meaningful to the parent. First, the competency of the child is not intuitively understood by the parent through this score and second it does not tell them how to act next. The topics covered in the book are not necessarily something that the parent is familiar with, which adds to their confusion. Thus it was not something that the parents engaged with.

 While parents acknowledge that the content seems and looks great, by providing a tangible evidence of the efficacy of the product, our goal is to improve customer retention and repeat purchase.

We made other observation which led us to change the basic product design. Our earlier prototype was a purely digital learning solution, supported by rewards for completing milestones. We observed that pure digital/ (especially video-based) learning systems which assume the same level and pace for each child deliver poor outcomes. Children get bored and lose interest. There could be simple issues such as the speed of the audio- which needs to be different for different children. More importantly, if the child is not using their hands, such as writing or drawing,  during the learning process,  retention is poor.  Thus our product design was completely changed based on these observations and we moved to a book supported by app based solution.

Brainologi has chosen a path which is contrary to most of the ed-tech solutions out there. We have worked on the ground with children and are sticking our neck out to claim that in early years, physical learning tools supported by need-based digital is the right way. In  early years, pure digital learning solutions should be recommended and used with care by parents, schools, and authorities. 

We are in the final stages of delivering our new product on this philosophy, and thus for us this is the right and a crucial time to engage in a project that will help us establish the evidence base of our product to buyers.

1. Most skill evaluation for children happen in schools and by trained personnel. Our product is for home use. Our first question is how do you design an effective home based evaluation technique/ a kind of self test for parents of early learners.

2. How do you decode the learning curve of the child to the parent, in other words provide evidence of learning outcome in a manner that parents understand.

Over the 12 week period we would like to arrive at the following stages of solution finding.

1. What play based/ paper-based techniques can be used to record milestones of a child’s learning journey, on any given topic at home. We hope desktop research would be able to give us a few options as a starting point. 

2. Using the above options, we can develop a few quick prototypes which meet the requirement of a self use tool

3. In the last stage we would like to conduct a usability test and user interviews for these tools. The test should answer for : are we able to establish the efficacy of our product to our buyers? And thus are we able also able to  guide parents with sharp, simple step by step inputs on what they can do to help the child.

The output received will be used further design our product. We envisage a 4 part enhancement of our product based on the LEAP project outcome.

1. A self assessment tool as mentioned above will be designed and  incorporated as a part of the product. This could be incorporated in the book, our app or a combination of both

2. A way to present / interpret  this evidence to the parent in a meaningful manner

3. Providing a simple guide to the parent based on the evidence received

4. Enhancing our product content based on the evidence 

Our short term, rather an immediate outcome is enhancements in our product design. We plan to incorporate an evidence tool in our product. Our goal is that our customers  can do a self evaluation  and understand the improvement in the outcome of their child . This will enable them to cater better to the learning gaps in their children. With the support of our app which addresses the learning gaps, we hope to see better academic outcomes in the medium term. And with better inputs at home, an overall improvement in the well being of the child.

In the long term, our goal is to have better customer retention and repeat purchase, and an improved word-of-mouth advocacy of our product, leading to higher revenues.