Mobile app inventor Richard Mander visited the college to discuss the process of designing, building and releasing his mobile application “Sweetnote”. Sweetnote is an app to assist young people learning musical instruments by giving some structure to their practice time. There are two forms of Sweetnote, one for students and the other for teachers.
The idea for the app came to Richard when he observed his daughter at her cello practice, which was a little unorganised. When a parent signs up for the app, it links to a teacher. The teacher can set out for the student what they should do in their practice sessions for example, 3 minutes on scales, 5 minutes on the Bach prelude and 2 minutes scales to finish. The student gains badges and “streaks” for completing practice sessions.
The app creator was joined via Microsoft Teams by Egill Bjornsson of Kode Technologies, who is the developer who built the app. Egill is Icelandic but lives and works in Brazil; illustrating how collaboration in ecommerce can be international.
The students saw the design process in detail. Although it is a simple app, the Sweetnote application uses at least 60 screen layouts in the journey through the app and the database to support record keeping has in the region of 40 tables. Egill and Richard explained how they make use of pre-built components in the Apple Software Developers Kit, also linked to utilities created by other developers, for example for the chat facility allowing students to “talk” to their teachers in between lessons.
The final stage of development was getting approval from both Google Play Store and the Apple AppStore so that the apps could be made available to the public. For Apple, if it is going to be possible for users to “sign up with Facebook”, or “sign up with Google”, it must be possible for them to “sign up with Apple”.
If you are interested in business and are tech savvy like Richard and Egil, our BTEC Level 3 Information Technology and Business courses are ideal. Find out more.
