The Project

A digital experience that complements the Araribá Collection textbooks, a Brazilian leader in the Elementary II segment

Editora Moderna's educational chatbot was built through two projects. The first was the experience project, designed and developed within Joco (knowledge journeys), a proprietary platform from outracoisa*, created to help people of all ages learn in moments and spaces not traditionally used for learning.

The second project concerns the program content. The outracoisa* team adapted the content of the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) to a conversational format, in more than 200 microlearning journeys.

The Challenge

Fortnite's Competition

The product was targeted at an age group (9 to 13) that is 100% digital and sees screens as a vast playground. The challenge was to bring educational content, typically perceived as boring, to the playground. Editora Moderna brought in a group of teachers and writers experienced in educational content, who joined our product designers, conversation designers, developers, and product managers to strike a balance between rigorous instruction and the lightheartedness of games. We often debated the exact balance, but after the first five approved sessions, the project gained momentum.

The Process

Incremental Cycles of Learning and Evolution

The first part of the project followed outracoisa's classic user-centered design steps, with the added bonus of having a well-defined educational methodology and backend before we began. Discovery and ideation provided important insights for building the experience, especially when we tested the solution in the lab with boys and girls from two groups. The first was at the lower end of the age range, 9-year-olds, and the second was at the higher end, with 13-year-olds. The product was widely received, as something that left the children wondering whether they were treading on leisure or study territory. Some expressed this doubt as something amusing: "Wow! Could this become my homework?"

Later, with the platform ready, the process expanded to include journey packages on topics such as "French Revolution," "Fractions," "Geographic Space," and "Chronicles." Each package involved about 10 journeys and began with a teacher filling out a core content sheet. The content was translated into an experience that blended game and chat and returned to a broader group of teachers for approval. After a few iterations, the journey went live, and our conversation designers evaluated its performance on our dashboard and adjusted where necessary. This process evolved over about 18 months, until the product was live.

The image shows the usability test conducted with children in the target audience's age range.

The Solution

Complement to the textbook or standalone experience?

Moderna Stryx was originally conceived as a complement to the textbook, accessed via a QR code printed on the back cover. However, it proved so successful that we continued the project, offering it as a standalone product for students in all Brazilian schools, after receiving approval from the Ministry of Education in 2019.

The experience begins with a medical history, an onboarding process that allows the robot to get to know the student better before offering content. With an individual profile created, the student then completes each journey until they earn a badge, a gamified way to certify their learning. In addition to the conversational journeys, students had access to a vast selection of multimedia content for deeper exploration of the topics. Teachers have special access, which provides tips on activities and approaches for the classroom.

The platform identifies the student's learning level and offers content tailored to their current stage. Initially designed to reach nine-year-old children, the tool now supports students of various ages, including teenagers.