Helping children improve English pronunciation using machine learning.
Sweden 
Helping children improve English pronunciation using machine learning.
Sweden
When the Astrid co-founders first contacted Redvike (on the back of a referral from one of our other Swedish clients), their company was little more than a concept: to use AI to help children improve their English pronunciation.
Seed investment helped the duo develop the machine learning capabilities required to build a solution. And the co-founders had one design of how a demo product might look. They then approached Redvike and tasked us with developing a prototype to take to market.
Redvike approached the project with the ultimate ‘lean start-up’ mindset. We focused on building functional prototypes to validate product-market fit, experimenting with solutions until we found features that appealed to Astrid’s target user-base.
This iterative approach helped us create an app that looks like an illustrated book, with weekly releases introducing new features like sounds, animations, and real-time feedback that inspires children to keep practicing. We also added excel downloads and a sharing feature to allow teachers to send progress updates to parents in a few clicks.
The first demo version contained different types of content with different levels of advancement. The tasks didn’t have filters built-in yet. Over time, we have developed the app so that the order of the books depends on the skill level of the student.
In 2 months we developed a teacher interface that consisted of features like:
As a class admin, the teacher can add a student to the class, add information about the student (e.g. English level), and send them login details. To make it easier for students to set up accounts, the teacher could print all the login details and QR codes on an A4 sheet, which was then simply cut into smaller pieces and distributed to the students.
The teacher had access to analytics both at the level of students and the whole class. Thanks to this, he was able to check:
The second component – pronunciation analytics, enabled access to data on words with which the student had problems in terms of pronunciation and sounds.
In 1-2 months we also developed the admin console which allowed for content creation & management. In the Admin database, a teacher could manage books and exercises having the possibility of creating other types of tasks. In the beginning, the teacher could create 4 different types of exercise and later we extended the option to 9 exercise types. All were measured using the CEFR – international language difficulty level.
We also realized that PWA is not the best direction for this application. During the development, we encountered many problems related to animation, sounds, performance, and haptic feedback – functionalities that in general work better on mobile applications. Thus, we made a joint decision to switch to React Native and rewrite Astrid in order to get the full potential of the product.
Redvike’s agile approach has helped create a product that children genuinely love, and that teachers are excited to use. And while it’s been challenging to introduce new technology into the education sector, Astrid has engaged several schools (primarily in the US and UK) to test the app as a limited release. That said, interest is quickly building — especially across Asia — with inquiries arriving from India, Vietnam, and Japan: countries where the population typically has a robust understanding of English but needs support with pronunciation. The Astrid app represents the powerful, scalable resource that teachers need to improve pronunciation on a mass scale while making the learning experience fun.
Redvike's flexible attitude, strong technical know-how and great communication has been instrumental to getting Astrid off the ground! Working with Redvike's team of strong, fun and communicative engineers has made our co-operation a breeze!
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