ABCedu – From static books to interactive learning

ABCedu is a Slovak educational publishing house focused on creating modern, thoughtfully designed textbooks and learning materials for kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary schools.

Since 2019, ABCedu has been developing textbooks that go beyond memorization, supporting deeper understanding, practical application of knowledge, and the development of creative, analytical, and critical thinking. Their materials are built to serve three key groups at once: helping students learn more effectively, giving teachers strong didactic support and inspiration, and providing parents with confidence in the quality of their children’s education. Grounded in values of inclusion, individual approach, and honest, hard work, ABCedu collaborates with experienced authors and educators to deliver innovative textbooks that reflect the real needs of today’s classrooms.

Collaboration goals

For ABCedu, Revolware led the initial exploration and specification phase of an ambitious project aimed at transforming traditional workbooks and lecture books into an interactive digital learning experience. The goal was to preserve the proven didactic structure of ABCedu’s materials while enriching them with interactive tasks, dynamic inputs, instant feedback, and a clear separation between student and administrator logic. During this phase, we worked closely with educators to deeply understand classroom workflows, types of exercises, evaluation logic, and the real needs of teachers and students, and translated them into a detailed functional specification ready for development.

Revolware’s contribution

The functional specification phase played a key role in transforming ABCedu’s vision into a clear, buildable digital product. During this phase, we thoroughly mapped how printed workbooks and textbooks could become interactive without losing their pedagogical value, defining user roles (students, teachers, administrators), core use cases, content structures, interaction flows, and technical constraints. The specification described in detail how interactive elements such as exercises, multimedia content, feedback, progress tracking, and teacher controls should work, as well as how the system would scale across different age groups and types of textbooks. Just as importantly, it clarified what should not be built in the first iteration, helping to prevent scope creep and unnecessary costs.

Beyond functionality itself, the specification also served as a foundation for all key product decisions. It defined technical dependencies and recommended technologies, clarified supported operating systems and devices, outlined security and data protection standards appropriate for working with children and educational institutions, and proposed a high-level database structure to ensure long-term maintainability and scalability. The document established a shared textual basis for UX and UI design, ensuring that designers and developers work from the same assumptions and user journeys. It also specified what documentation would be delivered in later phases – from technical documentation to user guides for teachers and administrators. Finally, the exploration included competitive and comparative research of similar educational apps, helping ABCedu position their solution realistically within the market and avoid reinventing weak or outdated patterns.

By aligning educational goals, user experience, business priorities, and technical feasibility in one structured document, the functional specification became a single source of truth for all stakeholders. For Revolware clients, this phase demonstrates why starting with a thorough functional specification is the most important investment in any digital project: it reduces uncertainty, uncovers hidden risks early, enables accurate planning and budgeting, improves communication across teams, and ensures that development starts with clarity rather than assumptions.

Outcomes

The resulting specification defined a modular system where static content could evolve into interactive exercises such as tables, number lines, variable-driven tasks, and configurable assignments, all manageable through an admin interface without developer intervention. A strong emphasis was placed on automation, scalability, and long-term maintainability, ensuring that new content, task types, and learning scenarios could be added over time. This phase significantly reduced future development risk, aligned technical decisions with educational goals, and created a shared vision between all stakeholders.

Want to boost your education with latest tech-attitude?

If you are looking to turn existing educational content into a modern, interactive digital product while minimizing uncertainty and maximizing impact, get in touch with Revolware and let’s design the right foundation together!