Boosting Pupil Engagement With Self-Paced Activity

The Vision

To partner with Aspire in their mission to tackle the growing challenge of sedentary lifestyles among children and the associated health impacts with digital tools.

Aspire envisioned an app that could gamify physical activity — making exercise accessible, enjoyable, and engaging for students and teachers alike.

The goal was to create a platform that could generate research-quality data whilst fostering a positive attitude towards fitness from a young age, integrating activity seamlessly into the school day.

Enter Run:ED, a simple, web-based platform designed to help schools engage pupils in physical activity, track their progress, and meet key guidelines, all without adding to teachers' workloads.

Our Solution

We set out to bring Run:ED to life in a way that granted Aspire ample opportunities to gather user feedback and build features intelligently to maximise return on investment.

Prototyping to Validate the Concept

Working closely with Aspire, we conducted an initial Product Design Sprint to map out the app’s core features, focusing on usability, engagement, and educational value.

A prototype was rapidly developed and trialled in a partner primary school, gathering feedback from teachers and students to refine the user experience. This early feedback was crucial in ensuring that Run:ED was both effective and enjoyable, validating the business case and aligning with Aspire's educational goals.

Since this initial trial, mmtm have developed more feedback-led improvements in alignment with Aspire’s priorities for Run:ED. The app has now undergone a 20-school pilot term and is well-refined for a full launch in 2025.

Data-Driven Engagement and Motivation

One of Run:ED's key features is its data-driven approach to gamify, track, and encourage physical activity. The app records each student's run participation, distance run, and total active minutes, creating personalised profiles and generating school-wide insights.

This data empowers teachers to monitor progress, recognise achievements, and encourage a healthy level of competition, while Aspire benefits from accurate, anonymised metrics on activity trends across schools.

Consideration for Data Privacy

We prioritised UK GDPR compliance and adherence to the Online Safety Act by incorporating data minimisation practices, implementing robust encryption techniques, and ensuring that all data handling processes were designed with children’s online safety and privacy at the forefront.