According to researchers , whom we tend to believe, by the end of this year, ¼ of all the inhabitants of the Earth will use smartphones. The lively procession of mobile devices across the planet is pushing technology makers to transfer their web products to portable gadgets. The question is how to correctly transfer the feature to the mobile? The head of the mobile team LinguaLeo Konstantin Degtyarev Rirus told how to build this process, and what are the possible pitfalls.

We have had mobile apps in LinguaLeo for 2 years: the iPhone app came out in January 2012, the WinPhone in May, and the Android app in October of the same year. From the moment of release until 2014, only one direction has developed in applications - word training. In fact, the application was not an independent product, but only an auxiliary tool for users of the site. A few months ago, we began to move away from the concept of “addition to the service” to the concept of “Mobile First”. The goal that we decided to implement is filling the application with the necessary minimum for learning a foreign language using the LinguaLeo method.
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First of all, the list of functions that needed to be implemented was 100%: training the words “Brainstorm”, video with interactive subtitles, “Grammar courses” and “Grammar test”.

Training "Brainstorm"

As we wrote in the article about this training, the best result in the study of new words is achieved with an integrated approach. You need to remember the meaning, spelling and sound of the word, and then repeat the exercise after a while. The Brainstorm logic on the site is different from other workouts: the user tries to give an answer until he is correct. Vocabulary, in which mistakes were made, is available for re-study only after 24 hours. All this should be synchronized between the mobile and the web.

First of all, we looked at training workouts on the web. When a user sits in front of a computer on a site, he can spend more time on a lesson. But he will use his mobile in the intervals between his main activities, for example, standing in a traffic jam or in a queue. Therefore, the logic of “answer until you give the right answer” would be disastrous for training on smartphones. Initially, we decided to limit to 3 times the number of incorrect answers when working with one word on one of the parts of the workout (translation, writing, listening). As a result, 6 words fell on the “Brainstorm”, which had to be seen first, and then trained on 3 internal mini-trainings, if it was possible to make a mistake up to 3 times.

In this scenario, we got up to 24 screens that were supposed to be shown to the user on the device until he saw the result screen.

Remember that each workout takes time. Here are the average for each process:
Demonstration of the word card - 2 sec.
Word-translation - 4 sec.
Word Constructor - 7 sec.
Listening - 10 sec.

Total we get 6.5 minutes on average per workout 6 words. For a mobile user, this is a lot. We saw this for ourselves when we tested Brainstorm in the office. Experiments brought us to this scheme:

On training gets 5 words.
You can make a mistake only 2 times.

With this approach, the time for training has decreased to 3.5 minutes, which is much better for a mobile application. Currently, training is available on Android devices and WinPhone.

Grammar courses and test

An adaptive grammar test showing the level of knowledge of the student was previously available only to users of the site. More information about this feature can be found in our post . We implemented the same thing on mobile, adhering to the same test script as on the site. The test is available offline. We needed to provide for the possibility of the user interrupting the process. Therefore, regardless of the number of questions to which an answer is received, the program calculates the result and shows it.

It was important for us that users could take grammar courses on mobile devices. This section contains a very large amount of theory, assignments and exercises. Assessing the layer of work that was to be done, we realized that we could spend several times more time on development than planned. But I really wanted to understand whether the courses would be popular on mobiles or not. Therefore, we went to the following trick: we receive a list of grammar courses through the internal API, and display them on the client. But here we are already opening the course in WebView. We adapted the layout, and as a result, you don’t always understand where the WebView is and where the application is.


The disadvantage of this approach is to take courses only when the device is connected to the network. But the plus is obvious - we have in a short time created a section for studying grammar on mobile. Surprisingly, we received not so many requests “add offline courses” as we expected.

Test and courses are available in all LinguaLeo applications.

TED Talks on Mobile

Our users have requested to implement video viewing on mobile devices. Finally, WinPhone and iOS owners have this opportunity: now they watch TED Talks videos on their devices. We adapted the player with interactive subtitles specially developed by our team for mobile versions. The player itself was created on native components, without the involvement of third-party libraries.

Now video of performances is available when the device is connected to the Internet. The collection of materials completely repeats the service presented on the website and is updated simultaneously with the latter. Our hero, Leo the lion cub, recalls new releases on the main screen of the application. We decided that when a user first came across this collection, he needed to explain how to effectively use the player, and the application shows a training window once.

With the design of the section for mobile, we decided to stay on the vertical positioning, put the video on top, and the subtitles - under it. Below, there are options for the translation of unfamiliar words that can be added to the dictionary with one click. Recording at the same time automatically stops so that the viewer has time to understand the text. The first added 5 words the application offers to immediately train. You can stop learning by clicking the return to video button.

Summing up, we note that when transferring a product to mobile platforms, you need to remember about the user's contact time with your product, about the surprises that may arise if you accidentally break the connection with the network or exit the application, and that some features can be added to smartphones faster than it seems.

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