Company Overview
Synthesis is an innovative education technology company with two offerings. Their AI-powered math tutor provides an adaptive learning experience that helps children master K-5 fundamentals through hands-on, multisensory engagement. Additionally, through their team-based program, students solve complex problems and develop real-world skills by participating in unique online games with peers from around the world. Both products share a common mission: transforming education by making learning both effective and engaging.
Project Overview
Go Between joined the Synthesis engineering team as they were navigating the challenges of rapid growth common to early-stage startups. While they had proven the viability of their product — an innovative platform which taught children problem-solving through interactive games — it had become clear that their technical foundation and processes needed reinforcement to support their ambitious evolution as a company. Our team was initially engaged to unify their fragmented user experience through a design system, but our involvement quickly expanded to address deeper organizational and technical needs.
Synthesis faced several key challenges that were impeding their growth trajectory:
- Their user interfaces lacked consistency, creating friction in both admin and customer-facing experiences
- As a startup, they had gaps in their product discovery and planning processes
- Key team leadership positions remained unfilled, creating bottlenecks in decision-making
- Their technical architecture needed adaptation to support their strategic pivot to a more flexible engagement model
After assessing their immediate and long-term needs, we developed a multi-faceted approach that would strengthen their foundation while enabling continued product development. Our work with Synthesis encompassed several critical areas:
Design System Implementation
The initial scope of our engagement was to create cohesion across Synthesis' product. Rather than pursuing a risky complete rewrite, we architected a component-based design system that could be progressively adopted. Go Between was responsible for:
- Designing a set of reusable system components that maintained functional integrity while introducing visual consistency
- Creating an incremental rollout strategy which targeted one view at a time, minimizing disruption to ongoing development
- Implementing Storybook as a living documentation and demonstration tool to facilitate component adoption
- Establishing feedback loops with the Synthesis team to refine components based on real-world usage
Product Process Refinement
It became evident that Synthesis's product planning processes weren't scaling with their ambitions. Recognizing this gap, our team introduced a tailored version of product shaping methodology adapted specifically to their organizational structure and needs. This work involved:
- Facilitating structured conversations with key stakeholders to surface and prioritize needs
- Executing technical discovery to validate feasibility before committing resources
- Creating standardized planning artifacts that decomposed complex initiatives into manageable units of work
- Knowledge transfer sessions that empowered the Synthesis team to internalize and continue these processes
Team Leadership
With several key positions unfilled, Go Between team members stepped into interim leadership roles, providing continuity while Synthesis built out their permanent team. Our contributions included:
- Assuming product and engineering management responsibilities to maintain development momentum
- Managing relationships with additional contractors to ensure alignment with company objectives
- Participating in hiring processes to help identify candidates who could advance Synthesis's mission
- Establishing processes and documentation to facilitate smooth transitions to permanent hires
Strategic Initiative Execution
As Synthesis pivoted from weekly cohort sessions to a more flexible engagement model, we helped shape and implement several cornerstone features to enable this transition:
- Ad-hoc Events System: We designed and built a flexible framework for creating, managing, and running spontaneous learning events outside the traditional cohort structure
- Integrated Chat: Our team implemented cohort and event-based communication channels to foster student interaction within appropriate boundaries
- Privacy-Safe Student Profiles: We created a profile system that balanced connection opportunities with stringent privacy requirements for underage users
- Extensible Tagging System: Go Between developed a foundational tagging architecture with visibility controls to support personalized content discovery
- Admin Tooling Extensions: We enhanced internal systems and integrated with their Retool implementation to provide administrators with improved oversight capabilities
We have since deployed these improvements, enabling Synthesis to successfully transition to their new engagement model while maintaining the educational quality that differentiates their platform. The incremental approach to both technical and process improvements minimized disruption while allowing the organization to evolve. The design system has significantly reduced visual inconsistencies, the shaped product process has improved planning efficiency, and the technical foundations we established have proven flexible enough to accommodate continued innovation.
Go Between's engagement with Synthesis demonstrates how targeted expertise can help early-stage companies navigate critical transitions. By filling immediate gaps while simultaneously building sustainable processes and systems, we enabled Synthesis to maintain momentum toward their strategic objectives while establishing the foundation needed for their next phase of growth.