Langenscheidt Vokabeltrainer

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Working with Langenscheidt to build an interactive vocabulary training app in Flutter

Vocabulary training app in with reusable codebase

Partnering with Langenscheidt, a renowned language learning publisher with decades of experience in the industry, we built a vocabulary training app that helps people learn languages more effectively.

industries:
Education
technologies:
Flutter
Ruby on Rails
Bitrise
services:
Mobile Development
Download on the app storeDownload on Google Play

As a leading language publisher, Langenscheidt is constantly looking for solutions that simplify the learning process. Langenscheidt Vokabeltrainer is where technology steps in to improve how we memorize foreign language vocabulary.

Increasing the efficiency of remote lessons and leveraging mobile tech as a complementary tool for teachers is one of the core elements of modern education.

Key requirements

  • Tracking student progress
  • Customizing the curriculum to fit different learning abilities of individual students and groups
  • Setting reminders to take a lesson
  • Building student groups for an efficient distribution of learning materials
  • Incentivizing learners through games

Bringing technical experience to simplify learning

The traditional approach to education needs a fresh perspective to respond to the current learning environment where on-site lessons frequently intertwine with remote.

Most people carry their phones all the time. Mobile applications are therefore a huge opportunity to encourage consistency in revising material and learning new vocabulary. The interconnectedness can also simplify how students share materials and communicate about lessons.

Introducing a set of learning-focused features

There's no magic formula to learn a language instantly. But there are tricks that can help maximize the learning potential. For example, highly customizable lessons and revisions let the user adjust the pace to fit the daily schedule and learning abilities.

Langenscheidt Vokabeltrainer lets teachers create groups, compose lessons, and distribute the material to students via the app. The teacher has insight into the progress of each student, which helps further adjust the material.

Advanced progress-tracking

Progress tracking is divided into seven stages. When the user starts learning and passes tests, advancing to higher stages happens in a short time. But as the user progresses, the time between stage changes increases. For example, to go from the second to the third stage, the user has to wait a few days. But to advance from stage six to seven, the user has to wait a few months. This approach helps strengthen long-term memory as it requires the user to remember words learned months before.

The application will send the user a push notification when a specific number of words is ready for testing to advance to the next stage.

“Flutter is the obvious choice for products with a complex domain logic — a single codebase saves time and helps maintain consistency across devices,” says Zbigniew.

Scope of Work

To improve transparency, we worked in a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) model. The team at Langenscheidt had constant access to the app. Bitrise, a CI/CD tool, would rebuild the app every night with the changes made during the day. In the morning, the client could access and test the app on TestFlight or Google Play.

Frontend Development

Including Flutter in the technology stack helped ensure a fast delivery and pixel-perfect designs. Flutter also helped make the app look sharp and delightful on iOS and Android.

Backend Development

We chose Ruby for the backend because of the maturity and performance of this language within the project's context. Written in Ruby, the backend swiftly retrieves the data from the vast database.

Bitrise Integration

Daily app builds on Bitrise helped the client stay in the loop and give timely feedback — whenever Langenscheidt wanted us to change something, we could introduce fixes and change the direction before a lot of work and time went to waste.

Analytics

To know what’s going on inside the app and how users are behaving, we’ve implemented mobile analytics — Firebase — to log most of the events happening in the app.

Solution

An intuitive and highly responsive language-learning application for mastering vocabulary. Langenscheidt Vokabeltrainer features five different types of learning games designed to facilitate knowledge absorption and retention.

“With Flutter, we could achieve pixel-perfect designs on both iOS and Android versions of the mobile app. The graphics are sharp and clean,” Zbigniew adds.

Langenscheidt Vokabeltrainer is designed for teachers who want to use technology to improve the learning process for their students. As a modern learning tool, Vokabeltrainer gives teachers in-depth insight into student progress and flexibility to create a custom-made curriculum. Langenscheidt Vokabeltrainer supports remote language learning, letting students maintain consistency through reminders and notifications.

“Flutter brings comfort and convenience into the standard development cadence. Because of that, it’s often the preferred environment over the native approach for many developers. Work simply goes faster,” says Zbigniew Górawski, Delivery Leader at nomtek.

"Nomtek is a reliable business partner that we can recommend without any doubts. While working together, they have shown full professionalism and flexibility adjusting to our needs."

Krzysztof Petelenz

Team Composition

While the number of backend developers remained the same throughout the project, we adjusted the rest of the team’s size to the current scope. This let us allocate resources dynamically and maintain the project’s timeframe.

2

Backend Developers

2-4

Frontend Developers

1

QA Engineer

1

Project Manager

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