I'm currently learning french and one of the biggest problems I encounter is remembering vocabularies. My French professor told us that based on research, people that read the material will only retain the information up to 30%, if they hear it they will retain the content up to 40% and if they interact with the material they might retain it for up to 90%!!!
Additionally, learning can be a social process. Based on my experience, if you have motivated people that surround, push and challenge you to learn new things; you'll definitely learn a lot faster.
Knowing all that information, I wanted to create an app that might help me learn more in a fun and social way by discovering and exploring the language you are trying to learn.
What it does
LingoExplore is an app that challenges you to explore the world. It will provide you with a random word in french(we call them artifacts) and give you the definition and a small hint of what the random french word might be. Once you believe you know what that word is, you will have to find the object and take a picture of it. By using Shutterstock computer vision API, it will help you determine if the picture is the correct word. If the word is correct, it will be saved into your exploration artifacts as flashcards, if not you'll have to try again and find the correct word!
This app is meant to be social, you will be able to like and comment on other's artifacts. You can also challenge others to find an artifact and check your overall ranking among other users and your friends.
How I built it
By using react-native as the frontend framework, firebase to store information and images, and using Shutterstock API, we worked hard to assemble the idea into one single app.
Challenges I ran into
It was hard to assemble the idea into one single app, and the amount of time is too little to complete the idea. Many of the parts are hardcoded.
In the technical aspect, I didn't have enough react-native experience and had to learn on the fly. Additionally, I had to read and learn about the Shutterstock API and make it work for the app.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Finishing the alpha version of what I was envisioning and learning more about react-native.
What I learned
For the technical aspect, I learned more about react-native and about the Shutterstock API(which is awesome and I might consider using it on future projects).
I had the chance to meet and talk with other people that had great ideas, but I decided to go and try to follow what I was envisioning. #chaseYourDreams
What's next for LingoExplore
It would be awesome to hear about the mentor's opinion and see the possibilities of this app.