AI-POWERED LEarning App
MathNex
ROLE
UX Designer
EXPERTISE
UX/UI Design
YEAR
2025
Personalized Learning for Lasting Impact
How can we empower students to overcome their challenges in math and achieve their full potential? Can we make learning engaging and tailored to individual needs using technology like IRT and gamification? How do we shift long-term perceptions of math from a tedious subject to an enjoyable, relatable experience? This project began with exploring these critical questions to deeply understand the barriers faced by students, teachers, and parents in education.
Note: This project was done in Portuguese and later translated to English by me.
Challenges
High Level Goals
Help students identify and overcome difficulties in basic math operations.
Create an engaging and motivating learning experience through gamification.
Offer a personalized approach to learning mathematics
Problem overview
of 15-year-old Brazilian students lack basic math proficiency, struggling with fundamental operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
of students in Brazil don't meet the minimum math proficiency level required to participate fully in society, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
of Brazilian students demonstrate low creativity levels, a skill closely tied to problem-solving in math as reported by the OECD
Brazil occupies the 65th position in the PISA ranking out of 81 nations according to the PISA Report of 2022
Process Overview
The MathNex design process followed the Lean Startup methodology for its agility and user-centered approach. We used tools like Lean Canvas, SWOT analysis, and agile User Stories to identify key needs and define the MVP. Personalization via Item Response Theory (IRT) and gamification were prioritized based on research and competitive analysis. This approach enabled rapid prototyping, user testing, and iterative improvements driven by feedback and performance metrics.
To kick off the project, I led a 5-day Design Sprint with our business, design, and development team. I facilitated each step—from mapping the problem and identifying opportunities to sketching solutions and building a high-fidelity prototype. At the end of the sprint, I organized and conducted user testing sessions that delivered actionable insights. This early alignment around user needs helped us reduce development risks and accelerate decision-making.
User Persona
To better understand the problems Brazilian students face when learning math, I developed a user persona to represent our primary audience and guide strategic decisions across design and business.
Creating João’s persona was essential to designing a product that speaks directly to students’ real needs. It informed the user-centered interface, structured our Lean Canvas, and shaped the app’s features using user stories.
Each user story translated João’s needs—and those of his parents and teachers—into clear development goals.
João Pereira | 10
Goals
Needs
Pain Points
Difficulty identifying which math topics to prioritize in his studies.
Traditional teaching methods feel too technical and disconnected from his interests.
Lacks access to tools that provide real-time feedback and personalized exercises.
Research and Discovery to Understand Educational Challenges
This phase focused on understanding the core issues faced by students, teachers, and parents in math education. Using desk research, we analyzed data from studies like PISA 2022 and identified key pain points, such as students’ difficulty mastering basic math operations, lack of motivation, and the absence of financial literacy in traditional curricula. We also conducted competitor analysis to map gaps in existing digital math teaching solutions and defined the app’s unique value proposition through tools like SWOT analysis and the CSD matrix.
Designing a Solution to Students’ Real Needs
An MVP was crafted with three key features: IRT-based personalization to tailor learning to each student's needs, gamification elements to boost engagement through rewards and challenges, and financial literacy integration to teach real-world skills. Agile User Stories ensured these features aligned with the needs of students, parents, and educators, forming a solid foundation for testing.
Testing Assumptions and Refining the Experience
The prototyping process was crucial in transforming User Stories into functional and intuitive interfaces. We developed wireframes and interactive prototypes to test the user experience and validate key design elements, such as progress dashboards, gamified challenges, and an adaptive feedback system. With each iteration, we refined the design based on user needs, ensuring a seamless and pedagogically effective learning experience. Additionally, usability tests were conducted using the think-aloud methodology to gather real-time user feedback and further optimize the interface.
Competitor analysis
I conducted a competitor analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of existing math education platforms, focusing on how they engage students, personalize learning experiences, and align with educational goals. This helped identify opportunities for differentiation and innovation within the MathNex product.
A free educational platform offering thousands of video lessons and exercises across subjects, widely used in schools worldwide.
✅ Pros:
• Completely free and ad-free.
• Large content library aligned with international standards.
❌ Cons:
• No adaptive personalization (doesn’t use IRT).
• Less engaging for younger children; relies heavily on video content.
Solution
The final solution reimagines math education by adapting to each student’s unique learning journey, ensuring they receive support where it’s needed most. It introduces engaging mechanics that make the learning process enjoyable and rewarding, fostering motivation to explore and improve. Additionally, it bridges academic content with practical skills, teaching students concepts they can apply in real-world scenarios to better prepare them for the future.
User flow
The app’s UI is intuitive and engaging, featuring dynamic visuals, progress trackers, and gamified rewards to motivate students. Its clean design ensures accessibility, while adaptive content personalizes the learning experience, making math both approachable and enjoyable.
Interactive exercises
The app features interactive exercises designed to make learning math more engaging and effective. These activities adapt to each student’s progress, providing real-time feedback and challenges that encourage active participation.
Future AR applications
For future versions of the app, we aim to integrate Augmented Reality to demonstrate how mathematical concepts (e.g., fractions) translate into real-life applications.
Next Steps
Next steps include refining the solution, testing it in real-world scenarios, and forming partnerships to scale its impact.