App Design: Green Owls and Pots of Gold

Back in January there was an article on ELTjam that resonated with me. ‘To app or not to app?’ looked at the decisions involved when deciding whether to go down the app development path or not. I’ve been wrestling with many of the concepts it talked about in my own app design journey. So, I’m going to revisit the first four points of the article through the lens of my current experiences with designing an app.

ELTjam pointed out how Duolingo often weighs heavily upon the minds of potential ESL app developers. The Green Owl of Doom’s slick interface and somewhat tedious language translation activities make you dream of your own “I can do that!” pot of gold. Yet, could I realistically come up with something better?

No.

Could I impact globally on language learning?

Definitely not.

Will I make a lot of money?

Zero chance.

But, might I learn something through the process?

Absolutely.

1. Business or hobby

From the answers above you could probably guess that the project I am undertaking is a bit of a hobby. I am teacher who runs his own school and learning-with-technology website and I like to continually develop my own skills or push in new directions. Polymaths are “at our best when we turn our minds to many things.” Often the best ideas come from people working across fields not just within their own. Embarking on a project like this has allowed me to develop my skills in different fields such as project management, IT, sketching and also to collaborate with people who aren’t directly related to the teaching business.

At the beginning of our project we looked at it from a business perspective but we evolved, or pivoted, to a more hobby-like position. Taking the business model off the table allowed us to focus on the potential skills learned from a project like this rather than turning a profit. Further down the track, it might be a stepping stone to other opportunities and connections which lead to that mythical pot of gold at the end of the app rainbow.

2. Your Idea

I’ve had a few ideas incubating in regards to useful apps. These ideas all came from perceived problems in my classroom and ways an app could address them. The three ideas that were jockeying for top position were a pronunciation app, a listening app and a student language profile app. In order to get opinion on what people wanted from an app we decided to crowdsource for feedback online. We are currently giving regular updates online where teachers or other interested stakeholders can get involved in the development process. Teachers can participate at any stage of the app design with ideas on what they would like to see happen.

However noble this intention might have been it is easier said than done to get people involved or to give a s**t. I even desperately fished for input from old colleagues and friends through Facebook — achieving a grand total of one comment. It might not be a lonely planet anymore but it can definitely be a lonely online world when you are looking for feedback.

So after breaking the different options down (more on the decision process can be found here) we decided on the student language profiler. An app that allows you to record quickly formative details about a student and then share that information with other teachers. This was the most appealing because it addresses a clear problem in my classroom and, from a technical point of view, would be the easiest to get up and running.

2. What Does Success Look Like?

Success for this project won’t be measured in cash but rather on three factors:

1. whether it improves things in my classroom
2. if other teachers get involved along the way, thereby broadening my online professional network
3. what skills I bring out of this project

At the end it might be a piece of junk. However, I might improve my sketching skills which I can then

feel proud of in the classroom, rather than ashamed, or maybe I’ll broaden my IT knowledge which I can then apply to other ideas on my website.

So, some might define success as standing on the shoulders of giants but our success might be defined as the toe jam that elevated a giant a few millimetres higher for someone else to stand on their shoulders and take the idea to somewhere we never thought possible.

3. Your Users

Who is our target user? Well, not to sound too selfish, but it’s primarily me followed by other teachers and language colleges who want to track the progress of students to help mine the classroom for learning opportunities. Building on my experience working at language colleges, little information is shared between teachers on students’ strengths and weaknesses. Often the extent of it can be “She’s really good” or “He has a hygiene problem”. Effectively teachers are starting from scratch every five to ten weeks when there should be a profile of that student’s strengths and weaknesses built up over time through formative, summative and self-assessment. So instead of wasting time finding out these problems yourself, you know what the problems are and you can start working on them straight away.

Conclusion

If you’re sitting on the fence about whether to go down the app path, maybe don’t get obsessed with making a profit but rather think in terms of what skills and connections you might get out of the whole process.

Damien Herlihy has been kicking around the ELICOS industry for over ten years now. He went solo two years ago and started his own language college in Thailand and found out it wasn’t all Mai Tais, massages and smiles. He also runs his own website where he hopes to obliterate the silos of teaching through sharing ideas on using technology in the modern ESL classroom.

Image creditKorvar via Compfight cc Text added by ELTjam.