Our work plan for the feasibility study was composed of 6 tasks. From the beginning of the project phase covered by the Phase 1 to the end of the period covered by the report, we achieved all the planned tasks. In this section, we include a quick overview of the main results achieved for each task.
Task 1. Complete our market study
During phase 1, we completed our market study. It included several phases: a. market analysis, b. market opportunity, c. competitive analysis, d. barriers to entry and overcoming them and e. business model. Our market analysis confirmed that the global e-learning market was a growing market (5% CAGR from 2017 to 2024) but going through a phase of profound change with the traditional self-paced e-learning market declining to the benefit of more interactive & engaging solutions (game-based learning, etc.). As we propose a gamified social platform, this change constitutes a windfall effect.
Task 2. Complete our risk-assessment study
Our risk-assessment study led to the identification of 14 risks, the majority of which expected to have a medium or medium high importance on our activity. Several measures were planned to mitigate, transfer or avoid the risk.
Task 3. Complete our FTO study
Both the USA and the EU have reduced the patentability of computer programs, including blockchain-based implementations. To be patentable, an invention should not only be a “generic computer implementation” of an abstract idea but should instead be a “technical solution to a technical problem” with a clear “technical effect”, new usage based on an existing technology are therefore not patentable. As a result, we cannot patent every aspect of our innovation, but other companies can’t prevent us from operating with this technology as long as we do not solve a given technical problem in the same way. Phase 1 enabled us to identify several patents related to similar topics to ours and to identify several of our patentable innovations.
Concerning the other technologies we intend to use in our platform, in its current stage, SDLab was developed using web technologies distributed under open-source licenses, allowing modification, redistribution & commercial use as long as the project provides attribution to the authors of the original code and don’t hold them liable.
Task 4. Technical, practical and economic feasibility
On the technical level, the technologies we develop our solution with are tried and tested. As most features already exist on competing platforms (though in a less advanced state), their technical feasibility is beyond question. Only 3 of the planned features (certification and IP protection system, AI for the authoring tool, AI for adaptive learning) represent a technical challenge. However, the question is not if we can implement them but how
On the practical level, our team is composed of experienced developers who have already contributed to develop SDLab and are totally familiar with the technologies it uses. They represent about 1/3 of our workforce.
On the economical level, developing our digital solution is mostly a question of skills and time and doesn’t require specific materials, save for top-of-the-range computers for our employees. The development is made with widely spread technologies, languages and open-source computer libraries.
Task 5 and 6. UX research and prototype development
we led a mixed methods research aiming to better characterise one of our main targets: Secondary and Higher Education teachers. The purpose was to confirm their needs (UX, features, etc.). Consequently, the feedback received concerned mostly existing platforms instead of the UX provided by our solution. This resulted in UX guidelines and their application to our solution (development).
