About the client
AKF Portugal is the Portuguese office of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) — a global non-profit operating across 3 continents. Active in Portugal since 1983, the Foundation focuses on early childhood development, education, and strengthening civil society, with a specific emphasis on the social, cultural, and economic inclusion of migrant and underserved communities.
Today, AKF Portugal supports 264 civil society organizations, reaching 116,000 people through community programs. Its education initiatives work with 51,000 learners and close to 800 teachers and school heads. Through work and enterprise programs, it has helped over 17,000 people in Portugal improve their skills and access better employment opportunities.
Business context
The client approached Geniusee to design and build the K’CIDADE Academy Platform. It’s an AI-assisted learning platform for civil society professionals, public service actors, educators, and community leaders working in contexts of social inclusion, diversity, and organizational transformation.
With over 40 years of hands-on experience working with organizations and professionals across multiple sectors, AKF Portugal had the expertise. What they lacked was the infrastructure to deliver it at scale, in a personalized, accessible, and technology-driven way.
The mission was to build a platform capable of strengthening 1,000 organizations annually and improving the quality of life for 500,000 people through smarter, more equitable access to professional learning.
The platform aims to empower users with personalized, multimodal, and context-aware learning experiences that promote more inclusive, resilient, and community-centered responses to social, educational, environmental, and climate-related challenges.
Product goals:
- Increase satisfaction and improve the quality of life for CSO constituents
- Strengthen 1,000 organizations annually, benefiting 500,000 people
- Better qualify professionals with enhanced skills in participatory methodologies, financial management, and impact assessment
- Offer more effective, tailored services that address the needs of diverse communities
Lack of accessible, high-quality, locally relevant, and practical learning content
Practitioners in social inclusion and community work had limited access to practical, up-to-date, and relevant Portuguese-language training for their day-to-day work. Generic content wasn’t cutting it.
No visibility into organizational skill development
Without a structured digital platform, AKF Portugal had no way to track whether professionals were progressing, applying what they had learned, or generating measurable change within their organizations.
No infrastructure for personalization
The platform’s target audience ranged from NGO volunteers and school educators to municipal managers, cultural mediators, corporate HR leads, and people with migrant backgrounds. Each group carried distinct learning needs, schedules, and language contexts. A single, uniform learning path was not viable — the platform needed to adapt to each learner from the moment they arrived.
Multilingual learners with non-negotiable inclusion requirements
A significant portion of the platform’s users come from vulnerable communities across different sociolinguistic backgrounds. Multilingual access, accessibility compliance, and GDPR-compliant data handling had to be built into the system’s core.
Solutions we implemented
Our process was collaborative and iterative, shaped by a client feedback loop, regular sprint demos, and ongoing UAT with AKF Portugal. The full scope covered UX/UI design (including research, branding, and a full package of screens), custom software development, and AI integration, all built within an existing WordPress infrastructure.
Following a Scrum methodology, our team delivered a production-ready MVP that included the following systems:
1. Personalized LMS with adaptive learning pathways
The LMS opens with a diagnostic. Before any courses are visible, learners answer questions about their role, the skills they need to develop, and what they expect from the program. That input shapes a tailored pathway (not a suggestion), a structured sequence built around their specific answers.
From there, the dashboard gives users real control. They can filter courses by status, pick up mid-module, and move freely between lessons and quizzes. It’s a straightforward setup that covers what learners need from a daily-use platform.
2. AI-powered virtual tutor
The tutor runs on open-source LLMs, fine-tuned on K’CIDADE’s own training materials and given a persona that aligns with the platform’s identity, rather than feeling like a generic assistant. It lives in a floating interface that follows users across every page — available without breaking focus on whatever they’re doing.
Voice works in both directions. The tutor speaks and listens, keeps a complete conversation history that learners can refer back to, and automatically updates its knowledge base when admins publish new content. No one has to maintain it manually.
3. Public AI chatbot
Built on Chatbase and open to anyone on the public site, no account needed. The knowledge base behind it was built by AKF Portugal (PDFs, presentations, internal documentation), so answers are grounded in the organization’s actual content, not a generic model. It handles routine questions and points users toward the right resources when something needs more context.
4. Gamification and progress tracking
Every enrolled course shows a live progress bar. Completing a milestone triggers an automatic badge award and an instant notification, without requiring an admin to approve. Users track everything from a dedicated “My progress” dashboard, with filters for active and completed courses.
5. Analytics and impact reporting
The admin dashboard covers learner activity, course engagement, and platform-wide completion trends. It feeds directly into grant reporting and mission accountability. Having it structured and accessible saves a significant amount of manual effort each reporting cycle.
6. Accessibility-first UX/UI
Screen reader compatibility, ARIA attributes on every interactive element, descriptive alt text on all meaningful visuals, and GDPR-compliant data handling. These requirements were part of the design from the first research sprint, which was the only viable approach.
Personalized learning pathways
New users start with a gamified diagnostic before they see a single course. It captures their role, priorities, and skill gaps — and the platform builds their learning path from those answers. Not a recommendation. An actual sequence, tailored to where they’re starting from.
Multimodal course delivery
Video, audio, text, interactive guides. Each lesson resumes automatically from where the learner stopped last time.
AI virtual tutor
Fine-tuned on K’CIDADE’s own training materials, not a generic model pointed at the platform. It has a distinct branded persona, handles voice input and spoken responses, and keeps a full record of every conversation across sessions. When new content is published, the knowledge base updates automatically.
Public AI chatbot
Available on every public page, no account needed. Answers come from a curated knowledge base built specifically for this by AKF Portugal, so responses are accurate, not generic.
Gamification and badge system
Progress is tracked in real time across all enrolled courses. Hit a milestone and the badge lands in your profile automatically, with an instant notification. No admin approval, no delay.
Analytics and impact reporting
Admins get a clear view of learner activity, course engagement, and where drop-off happens. For AKF Portugal, it’s also what feeds their grant reporting — structured outcome data that used to take significant manual effort to pull together.
✅ High NPS score
The client rated Geniusee’s delivery with a high 100 NPS score, consistently providing positive feedback across every sprint demo throughout the project.
✅ MVP delivered on schedule
We delivered the full platform, including LMS, AI Virtual tutor, public chatbot, gamification system, admin dashboard, and accessibility features within the approved 2.5-month development cycle, with all critical and major defects resolved before release.
✅ Zero high-severity vulnerabilities at launch
We ensured the platform passed all QA processes (functional, regression, integration, and browser testing). We adhered to GDPR and data protection requirements, with no high-severity security issues remaining open at go-live.
✅ Built to reach 500,000 beneficiaries
The platform architecture was designed to support 1,000+ organizations and 500,000 people annually, with the infrastructure to grow alongside AKF Portugal’s long-term social impact mission.
During the project’s implementation, we faced some constraints, and here’s how we managed to overcome them:
