Taking a platform from idea to reality and making music education accessible
Amplify is an Australian EdTech start up upskilling and supporting primary school teachers to deliver the compulsory music curriculum in classrooms. Amplify approached us to create a platform that combines high-quality video content with teacher-friendly lesson plans, making music lessons accessible to all students. Together we developed a user-friendly product for teachers that delivers curriculum outcomes and engages students.
Ready-made curriculum music lessons provider
Co-founded by music educator Ricky Kradolfer and his wife Natalie Kradolfer, Amplify's goal is to make contemporary, inspiring, and engaging music lessons accessible to all students, regardless of their location by upskilling and supporting the teacher already in the classroom.
Ricky and Natalie approached us looking to create a platform that combines high-quality video content featuring well-known artists with teacher-friendly lesson plans, enabling schools to deliver music lessons without the need for extra music expertise.
Make it easy to teach music with confidence
Natalie and Ricky knew what they needed Amplify to be. In short, a music education product to help rock Australian primary music education out of a state of doldrums, due to staff and expertise shortages.
To make it happen, they needed to develop a user-friendly product for teachers. They needed Amplify to deliver the right curriculum outcomes. And the kids had to be excited to be a part of the learning experience.
“We knew that tech was the solution,” Natalie says. “Kids aren’t being taught music in their classrooms because there are not enough teachers, let alone music teachers.”
The idea of the Amplify platform started to gather steam once Amplify received some funding. This emboldened Natalie and Ricky to consider a digital partner to help them develop their product and ultimately get it into the market.
Amplify enlisted Airteam, and the partnership kicked off with a few early guiding principles:
- Never be boring.
- Help teachers facilitate student learning.
- Enable teachers to learn about music, along with the kids.
Transforming Amplify from an inspiring idea to reality was exciting, Natalie adds. “It was a process of distilling a lot of the ideas that we had into a [product] that was actually possible,” she says.
Turning inspiration into a real product
Nick Simpson, our Head of UX, collaborated closely with Amplify throughout the research and discovery process and human-centred design phases of the project. He says Amplify was extremely passionate about bringing its idea to life.
“They needed somebody to help them flesh it out, turn it into reality, and actually implement it,” Nick says. “That’s where we came in.”
Amplify visited our office for collaborative sessions during the project. According to Natalie, the brainstorming sessions during the human-centred design phase were fun and fruitful.
“Nick is an absolute legend,” says Natalie. “He’s also the fastest designer I think I’ve ever worked with.”
A modern digital education platform for modern music learners
Amplify, the platform, was built to look familiar to anybody who has ever navigated streaming platforms such as Spotify and Netflix. A contemporary interface was designed to immerse users in a modern music education universe. The homepage features bold buttons and images that support seamless interactivity.
Natalie and Ricky spent about 200 hours in studios and other settings, filming educational content for the platform. The lesson content includes appearances of modern-day artists such as Amy Shark, Sheppard, King Stingray and many more.
Teachers use the platform to teach music in the classroom, through a sequential chain of lessons featuring high quality video content and prescriptive learning activities. They can download supporting materials such as worksheets and assessment rubrics to ensure they are hitting key learning outcomes in education guidelines.
A market-ready education platform surpassing expectation
Amplify is now being used in schools across Australia. Natalie says teacher feedback indicates Amplify is rising to the challenges it was intended to overcome.
“The most common thing we hear is how easy it is to use,” says Natalie. “It looks and feels like things they might be familiar with, which was a big part of our UX design. Teachers who haven’t used it before are navigating it and [finding it] super easy.”
Ben Mullaley, our Delivery Manager concentrated heavily on the project during the Agile Development and Lean UX phase. He says Amplify has a fantastic platform almost straight out of the box. It’s market-ready and scalable.
Natalie says collaborating with Airteam helped her see the product’s potential in a new light.
“The biggest thing I’ve learned is that anything is possible,” she says.
Our collaborative approach underpins our results
Our team is comprised of passionate problem-solving experts. But, our success in software engineering and UX design is strengthened most by our co-plan, co-design, and co-build approach to creating software products.
Our collaborative approach to design and development has resulted in some amazing outcomes. We’ve helped numerous Australian businesses like Amplify see their digital product idea come to life. If you would like to join them and learn how we can support your business with its software engineering and UX design services, request a call-back via our contact form today.
