Surge were delighted to be involved in a major transformation that www.bitesize.irish undertook on their Irish language e-learning application.
To find out more about Bitesize Irish Gaelic feel free to read our last post written when we first partnered. In summary it is a fantastic tool for learning the Irish language in small “bitesize” segments. Our previous task as highlighted in the post was to restyle the pages to allow them to become mobile and tablet responsive. This time we were taking on something completely new and different.
Bitesize tasked us with brainstorming with them and finding a solution that makes the progress of learning Irish through their site far clearer and more fun too. Working with Bitesize we had to help come up with a great way of dividing the lessons into different levels and weeks allowing for easy to use, fun and clear progress to be seen by the user. We called it “Project Chunkify”! :) . The simple premise was that from now on a user is always at a very clear point in their path to “ag caint as gaelge”. They know which weeks they’ve completed, they know what level they are on, and they know how much is left.
We also had to keep current users in mind, so it was important that they were not suddenly thrown into the deep end either. Keeping that in mind we had to integrate the current user interface into this new project too.
Our Process
First we held several meetings where we all put our heads together to ask questions and find answers. This required a huge amount of attention to detail where we felt simplicity and ease of use was to be prioritized over all else.
A picture paints a 1000 words and so the next step was for John to begin building wireframes on every single possible step a user goes through taking into account all the user stories. These wireframes had to keep in mind so many various possibilities, account types, not to mention lesson, week or level completion types that the final versions of the wireframes ended up serving as a clear tool and reference manual before development was to begin.
As we worked in stages with various milestones and deadlines the development soon began. Having put in much preparation it was very clear from the word go what needed to be done and when it was to be finished. Building the database tables, admin and front end functionality we ran into several small roadblocks, nothing which wasn’t easily surmountable.
On Time Delivery
Having agreed several deadlines Surge were proud to deliver this project within the timeframe required allowing the staff to begin migrating users and adding lessons to their appropriate weeks and levels. We hope to keep working with Bitesize Irish and perhaps improve own Irish while we’re at it. Why not give it a go yourself and try a free trial on their site!
