Scaling the personal touch
An independent Danish language school wanted to improve its student experience and grow new revenue without hiring.
Industry
Language Education
Team
1 person
Duration
Ongoing
My role
Researcher & Business Designer
Led the full project end to end: research, synthesis, strategy, and validation
Generated and pressure-tested new revenue concepts under a no-hire constraint
Outcome - Diversification of revenue streams
THE BRIEFScaling value without scaling the team
Learning with Ervin (LWE) is an independent Danish Language School focusing on the PD3 exam - a high-stakes exam for internationals in Denmark. This exam is often the last step before they can work, study or even live permanently in Denmark.
The brief — Understand what drives value in the student experience, balancing near-term improvements with opportunities to scale and extend value by diversifying revenue streams beyond the core service.
REFRAMINGUnderstanding the student experience
Before exploring revenue opportunities, I needed to understand the value LWE already provided.
To do this, I stepped back and examined the student experience through interviews and surveys. These focused on how students experienced LWE — where value emerged, where it broke down, and why they chose attending & paying for LWE over alternatives.
This shifted the conversation from course delivery to value creation, revealing where LWE’s competitive advantage was strongest: Personal Feedback & Learning Aids.
Using qualitative interviews and surveys at different points throughout the course, we followed students across the learning journey and translated their experiences into a service blueprint.
Mapping the student experience against the backstage work required to deliver it revealed how much of LWE’s strongest value depended on Ervin’s manual input. This raised a key strategic question: what could be scaled or automated without losing the quality that made the experience effective?
Excerpt from the insights deck — quotes detailing the lowest moments of the student journey.
The research surfaced two strengths and a gap we wanted to double down on
Strength
Personal Feedback
Students singled out personal feedback as the key differentiator between LWE and free traditional language schools.
Unlike traditional classroom models, where feedback is limited and generic, students valued the depth and specificity of support they received. This included tailored study documents, essay grading, ongoing tracking of recurring mistakes, and targeted grammar exercises drawn from their individual weaknesses.
This level of personalised feedback was perceived as the main reason the experience was worth paying for.
Strength
Learning aids
Students highlighted exam-aligned reading comprehension texts as a key differentiator in the learning experience.
Unlike materials found in traditional language schools, these texts were carefully designed to mirror the actual exam. They highlighted key vocabulary and connector words that frequently appeared in exam settings and included exam-style questions that simulated real test conditions.
As a result, students used them not only in class but also as mock exam practice, returning to them independently as a serious preparation tool rather than standard teaching material.
Weakness
Oral prep
Students identified the speaking component of LWE as the weakest part of the learning experience.
Unlike other areas of the course, students did not feel they had sufficient opportunities to practise speaking in a structured or sustained way. This led to a sense of being underprepared for the speaking component of the exam.
As a result, speaking practice emerged as a clear gap in the experience.
DESIRABILITY, FEASIBILITY, VIABILITYA series of experiments
Based on the value providers and gaps we uncovered in the student experience research, I was buzzing with ideas. To avoid building on assumptions, I used the lean startup experimentation loop framework to rapidly test ideas, reduce risk, and double down only on what proved meaningful for both LWE and the students.
Idea 1: Scaling personal feedback with AI
Personal feedback was one of LWE’s strongest value drivers, but also its most manual. The most valuable part of the experience was therefore constrained by the one resource that could not scale: Ervin’s time.
This led to: How might we preserve the quality and intimacy of the feedback experience while removing the dependency on manual effort?
With recent advances in AI, we explored whether personal feedback could be scaled without losing its specificity, structure, or exam relevance.
Idea 2: Learning Aids Subscription
The reading material Ervin had already developed was a core strength within LWE. However, PD3 typically represents the final stage of the Danish learning journey. The idea was to extend this value earlier in that journey — by introducing a subscription product that offers the same exam-aligned texts, adapted across different Danish proficiency levels.
This would repackage existing material into a new product, allowing LWE to reach learners much earlier in their progression. In doing so, it would both create a recurring revenue stream and position Ervin’s teaching in front of prospective students before they reach PD3.
Idea 3: IRL speaking community
Based on the research, the speaking component emerged as the clearest gap in the LWE experience. At the same time, there was a broader shift toward in-person connection and IRL communities, driven by fatigue with purely digital learning and a growing demand for real human interaction. This made the in-person speaking community feel like a natural extension of what students already valued.
However, the idea was ultimately killed due to scalability constraints (feasibility). Delivering it required significant involvement from Ervin, whose availability was already one of the business's main bottlenecks.
As a result, we moved away from this direction and are exploring alternative approaches that could address the speaking gap in a more scalable way.
