Development App - Story by SlipWe have divided the development of the app in a couple of phases: Investigation, Wire-framing and Designing, Development and Testing and Fine-tuning.
	Investigation When starting on IO2, we decided to first do some research on existing learning apps. We determined that all the big learning app have some kind of mascot. So, we decided to include a mascot as well, named Skilly, a lovable penguin. Additionally, during this investigation phase we created some example screens of what would be possible and showed them to all the partners at the end of the first IO.
Wire-framing and Designing In the wire-framing phase, we started to create the base interface of the app and how the user would navigate through them. We created a clickable demo that all the partners could test and provide us with feedback. The wire-framing is a vital phase when developing. The product is easy to adjust and will become the base of all the upcoming phases. If there would be a design issue later in the phases, the changes will have a high impact on our time schedule. After the wire-frame was approved by all the partners, we started designing the app. The design process always starts with some research on existing designs. We chose one of the most important screens, the main overview screen, to make in four different high fidelity designs. We have created 3 unique designs and one of them (our favorite) was a copy in which we played with the colors to make it follow the color scheme of the ADVANCE Logo (orange/blue). The partners then chose one of the four designs. They chose the one with the adjusted colors, our favorite. After that decision was made, we could design the complete wire-frame to a high fidelity design. After the design is finally ready, there is still room for feedback and tweak the things that needed to be tweaked.
	Development The development phase is the most enjoyable phase of them all. We see a vision come to life. The design is a key element in this phase. A good design really helps us understand what the software is supposed to do. It provides a structure that we can use when creating the the screen management, architecture and functionality the app. The base of the app was really easy to create. The content of the course was put in a Moodle platform, which was set up by the Macedonian partners. We analyzed the structure of the content on this platform to help us understand how to structure the internal database of the app. After the internal database and architecture was set up, we started the most complicated part: exporting all the English content from Moodle to the app, and make sure everything can be translated by our partners. First, we needed a way of exporting all the content from the Moodle platform to a format which the app uses. Also, we had to create a way for all the partners to be able to translate all the content. The solution we came up with was the following: get the content from the Moodle platform using its backup functionality write a transpiler to convert the content to a format which we had more control over use the converted data to create both a CSV document (also known as excel format) and the database for the app With the CSV file, we could create a Google Sheet and share this with the partners so that they could start translating the content. To get the translated document back into the app, we wrote another script that converts the CSV file to a translation document for each language and adds those files to the app. These scripts took us a while to create and was the most complicated work of the app, because you’re working with three different document types, two different database structures and multi-directional converting/exporting back and forth. Besides that, we had to keep every document in sync. To do that, we had a point in the development phase where we had to choose one source of truth and sync from there on out, otherwise the data could become lost. We are really glad that all our hard work payed off, because now we can easily build new languages into the app if we wanted.
Testing and Fine-tuning Another big part in the development phases was the building and deploying the app to the testers. We are developing the app for two platforms, Android and iOS. Both of these platforms have different tools to work with, and different policies on reviewing and deploying the app. Luckily we didn't had too much trouble besides that the reviewing of the app could take up to 3 days (most of the time this was only for iOS users) before our test group can test. So deploying quick bug fixes was sometimes a big problem, for most of our iOS users. During the test phase we received a lot of feedback. Thankfully, a lot of the feedback was positive. We also implemented some small new features and improvements. We tried our best to include all of the proposed changes of course, but some of the changes were just not possible because they would entail big structural changes.

After thoughts

In this IO, we had a lot of fun working with our partners, and hopefully gave them a little insight on what it entails to be developing an app. We are really grateful to have all our partners put in so much effort and time in creating this wonderful product. Besides the small problems we encountered with other parties outside of our control, we haven't had much trouble. We hope this product can really help the people who use it improve their digital skills.

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