Nick Academy

Design Lead

Made as part of Beta Studio

2021-2025

Nick Academy is an Ed-Tech mobile app that seamlessly blends education with entertainment. Designed to offer children high-quality screen time, it provides reliable, engaging, and—most importantly—fun learning experiences.

Nick Academy won the Audience Choice Award at the 2025 GESAwards – Global EdTech Startup Awards. 

THE CHALLENGE

Motivating 8-12-year-olds to prioritize learning over the constant digital distractions competing for their attention.

We conducted research, and user interviews, did market research, and sought inspiration from industry leaders. This helped us gain a better understanding of our target audience and identify opportunities.
 

THE SOLUTION

Nick Academy is a virtual School of Fun, where every door opens to a world of exciting learning challenges, rewards, and iconic Nickelodeon brands kids love.

*My Contribution
involved leading the creative team across research, ideation, conceptualization, feature development, design, animation, sound, game design, and tech artwork, collaborating with the development team, and conducting playtests.

01

THE PLATFORM

The user journey begins with registration and continues with child onboarding, avatar building, and customizing the user profile. From this point on, it all comes down to play-based curriculums, comprehensible challenges, scores, and incentive systems.

By utilizing storytelling, we developed a comprehensive atmosphere that can incorporate and connect disparate games: it's like being the new student in school who explores between classes and discovers exciting surprises around every corner.

02

LEARNING IS FUN

School is not our competition, Fortnite is, so the challenge here is to be fun and appealing for kids.

Topic 01

Math

Our goal is to teach not only the knowledge itself but also to emphasize the process of trial and error that will help grow skills such as creativity and self-efficacy. 

Topic 02

Coding

Computational thinking is a problem-solving method that involves expressing problems and their solutions in ways that a computer could execute: decomposition, pattern recognition representation, abstraction, and algorithms.

Topic 03

Science

In Nick Academy we teach physics fundamentals as a representative of the science subjects. 

Topic 04

Space

In the near future, it will be common to see job titles such as Mars Farmer, or even Space Traffic Manager. These new professions will require new skills and knowledge.

Topic 05

The Adventures

A multi-subject digital escape room experience. The application of knowledge skills in different environments, as well as having to combine different subjects, teaches the kids important skills of information use and systematic thinking.

The Adventure tutorial teaches the users the adventure flow, rules, and game mechanisms.

Topic 06

Engaging Reading

Kids aren't patient. Every user test revealed this. For textual lessons we used a Story Format, which many children are already familiar with. Throughout the lesson, micro-games are interwoven to ensure understanding, stimulate engagement, and keep the children's attention.

03

INCLUSIVE AVATAR BUILDER

To create a healthy environment for kids and increase identification, the character builder includes a range of inclusive and diverse design elements.

04

KEEPING PARENTS INVOLVED

Upon conducting our research, we discovered that parents are keen on taking part in their child's learning process, but in a manner and time that fits their schedule and preferences.
 

Using the dashboard on the Nick Academy website, parents can monitor their children's progress through the app as they develop their knowledge. This is a non-intrusive and elegant way to let kids have fun while providing parents with real value.

05

USEABILITY & PLAY TEST

Until the user interacts with our product, we are in the dark. This is where the real work begins.

Our process included examining the product every few weeks. In order to improve from time to time, we examined different possibilities, tested our basic assumptions, researched the children, and questioned them.

12

More than 12 official playtests were conducted, letting kids roam freely or with our guidance.

22

During these playtests, 22 children from all genders, aged eight to twelve, played the game unmediated.

160+

We have created more than 160 unique lessons that teach various subjects through distinct games.

322+

We have created more than 322 different levels for all game experiences.

10,000+

Thousands of kids have used Nick Academy on their own mobile devices since it launched (Downloaded from Apps Store and Google Play).

06

THE TEAM

The app was created by a team of professionals consisting of UX, sound and game designers, artists and animators, game developers, frontend and backend developers, content writers, and pedagogy experts.

 BETA Studio 

Analyzing the playtest results

Design sprint!

Nick Academy Created By: