Learned trio find the answer

Three budding whiz-kids from Busselton are developing a mobile app they believe could become a household name.

Learned — pronounced “learn-ed”— allows users to take a photo of a mathematical or scientific equation and moments later receive an answer.

The app is the brainchild of former Cornerstone Christian College student Rhys McKay and friend Jozef Meyer.

Ex-Busselton High School student Rhien Schultz has since come on board to market the app.

Jozef said he had the idea when he noticed school students were not using their scientific calculators to solve equations.

“A lot of kids in my class had these really powerful calculators but they weren’t using them because they’re cumbersome and not intuitive, ” he said.

“I realised there was a need for something with a simple input and that’s how the idea for Learned came about.”

Extra features planned for the future include step-by-step explanations of how equations are solved and manual input via a keyboard or writing on a touch screen.

Rhys said initial marketing via social media had shown positive feedback.

“Maths students are the obvious target audience, but we believe it can have a much broader than that, ” he said.

“It could be applied to anything — science, language, problem solving in any field. It’s limitless.”

The boys were in Busselton over the Christmas period to film a promotional video for funding platform Kickstarter. They hope to raise $50,000 to build and launch the app in 2014.

Rhien said a team of Ukrainian developers were on board to help with specialist coding.

“The way we look at it, we want it to become as successful as Snapchat, ” he said. “We want people to use it and spread it through word of mouth. We think it can become a household name.”

For more information, visit www.learnedapp.com or www.facebook.com/learnedapp.