A decade of education evolution

Reimagining and driving education forward with The Mind Lab.

Run by education disruptor, innovator and futurist Frances Valintine, The Mind Lab is a learning platform working to connect New Zealanders to the skills they need as the future of work becomes increasingly digital. With three platforms under their belt - The Mind Lab, Tech Futures and Digital Boost - The Mind Lab is upskilling digital capability, through online learning platforms and resources for businesses, professionals and teachers.

In its early startup days, The Mind Lab had one goal - to change how learning is approached and disrupt education as we know it.

Knowing a disconnect existed between what our students are learning and the increasingly digital nature of the world, The Mind Lab started out by creating a solution to upskill teachers’ digital capability, indirectly equipping students with these skills.

When choosing a Learning Management System to support this mission, The Mind Lab was faced with old-school, rigid and limited systems. Not wanting to work within the limitations of what was currently available, The Mind Lab decided to start from scratch and build from the ground up. The Mind Lab was after an LMS that would offer more flexibility and autonomy around the content they hosted, changes they could make and how grades would be displayed, communicated and delivered.

Building a platform to enable educators, business and community leaders to learn and thrive.

The Mind Lab reached out to Pixel Fusion through an existing relationship between the two CEOs to see if they’d be up for the job and, spoiler, they were! Together, they began working in tandem, with Pixel Fusion plugging right on into The Mind Lab's team and transforming their ideas into a digital product that would hit all the right notes, and connect New Zealanders with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.

April 2014 saw the launch of the very first iteration of The Mind Lab Portal, a product that would continue to evolve over the years. Key to this partnership and development of this product was open communication and transparency throughout this collaboration between Pixel Fusion and Mind Lab. Pixel Fusion kept the lines of communication open across the board with a dedicated Slack channel, planned out sprints, and regular updates and encouraged the free flow of ideas between the two teams. With no gatekeeping or middle-person facilitation, stakeholders could talk directly to developers, raising any concerns and making suggestions in real-time.

Working in synergetic harmony to keep on growing.

Throughout their time working together, The Mind Lab dialled up Pixel Fusion as needed to support their team and goals. Implementing continuous changes, improvements and updates to the original The Mind Lab LMS, assisting in the rollout of Tech Future Lab, Digital Boost and, in 2020, began the development of a new, reimagined LMS for The Mind Lab - Ako Mai. Offering micro-credentials and full TML programmes set to replace the existing The Mind Lab Portal, Pixel Fusion and The Mind Lab worked together on this new project.

Through the development of this project, it became clear that while Pixel Fusion initially came on board as a service for hire, covering The Mind Labs'abs developer needs, this was no longer the case. With The Mind Lab building its own internal product team, the two now conceptualised, built and worked together, with no clear delineation.

This longstanding partnership has evolved over the years, sometimes this has looked like carrying out improvements and upgrades, while others it’s redeveloping a whole new system. But whatever is asked of them, Pixel has risen to the occasion each and every time and is now a longstanding and integral part of The Mind Lab team.