Android |

Global Downfall, crises and opportunities in EdTech

The year 2020 is the unique year in every manner. Almost half of the year washed out due to the one of the biggest the world has ever witnessed. Worldwide lockdown (though a necessary measure) made it worse for economies and almost all the growth indicators turned red. However, as it is said that in crises there lies opportunities; even during these crises, some people found it by luck and some dug through it. If you’re yet to find your opportunity, don’t worry. We are bringing it to you.

Your Opportunity

The biggest gainer even during worst time is Online Learning and Ed Tech sector. It is not only because of COVID-19 that this sector has grown but the trend started since several past years due to many reasons like rural penetration of Mobile phone, cheaper internet costs etc. What COVID-19 has changed is the pace of growth and adoption of educational technologies. If you are any way interested owning your own app to earn during this pandemic, Kids’ learning through digital mode is the hot cake.

Why is it so?

1. New Normal

As fast as COVID-19 has spread, it has also brought the life style changes. The new normal is created and with continuing uncertainty people have started using digital learning platform like never before.

While it would be costlier for anyone to create whole E-School, it is cost effective and efficient manner to own an app that teaches crucial topics like Mathematics, Basic English, General Knowledge etc in most interactive, engaging and funny way.

2. There is an uncatered market with huge potential

Earlier the internet was not easily available, especially in the rural India (fondly known as Bharat). However, now we are amongst the countries with cheapest rates of internet and also with the highest number of smart phones in active use. For anyone looking to do something for Bharat, rural education and skill development is the best things. One of the chief reasons is that it is still uncatered market due to several problems like absence of apps in regional languages.

3. Any time learning

While in school learning important, it has some inherent limitations. Thus, kids can learn after schools in interactive and fun manner through e-learning apps.

4. Keeping the learning fresh

Educational apps can be built in such a way that make children more interactive and engaging. Keeping teaching methods fresh is integral to getting students engaged in their studies and learning apps are a fantastic way of achieving this.

Features of great online learning app

Unlike the current trend, the apps must not try to replace the live two-way interaction between teachers and students. It should just supplement the teaching of teacher so that the kids can concrete the concepts through rigorous practice. Not the learning apps attempting to make the kids smarter, to replace school learning or to replace the need of teacher but the apps bringing fun and interest to kids and parents are great.

An online learning app shall also satisfy psychological needs of both parents and students. The parents want their children to learn as much as possible. However, for children entertainment is the top priority. Thus, a great learning app must contain flawless and fecund content to satisfy parents’ needs. However, the real consumer is kid, thus to satisfy their need it must have eye-catching graphics, UI and game like content flow.

Some of the features of best kids Learning app are listed below:

- - Fun for kids
  - Skills Enhancing
  - Attractive graphics
  - Simple UI
  - Interactive
  - Habit forming
  - Comprehensive Content
  - Gamified content
  - Lower app loading time

Abundance of apps but scarcity of quality:

Nowadays, there are numerous educational apps available in the market. Many of them are awful owing to quality of content, some of them not satisfying needs of the kids, very few are good in some aspects. However, to find a great app which can both enhance the knowledge and also engage the child can be tedious.

Still not sure how to do it?:

We, at Arkay Apps have spent several hours evaluating psychological needs of children and parents and technical needs for better performance of the apps and have developed our own apps which are also available on google play store. All the apps are big hit and having whopping 2.5+ Million downloads together.

Here’s what you need to do:

There are several things you need to create next big hit in online education world. However, don’t worry if you are unsure of how to do any of them, just contact us and we will thoroughly guide you at every step.

These are actions needed to build next great (probably a billion dollar, who knows!!) app.

1. Click on the link below and go through to all of our apps and come back here.

https://bit.ly/30JLORX.

2. Decide on what you want to build.

Next, you need to carry out some research on what you can build so that children find it interesting and parents find it useful.

Tips for doing research

A. Choose your target users

For doing so you need to evaluate following factors:

• Location/ Region where you want to make an impact

• Content of your application

• Psychographics of audience

• Take surveys to understand the needs of parents and children

• Look out for changing technology trends

• Analyse the currently available apps and its content

B. Conduct surveys and analyse

Once you have chosen your target audience, you need to conduct surveys and interviews of parents and children in order to learn their specific needs and to learn what current applications fail to provide. More you conduct surveys and conduct interviews, the more your idea becomes relevant.

After that, thoroughly analyse the results you have got because it will serve as the base for your decision on what to build. After analysing, you should virtually decide upon what you want to build and how it will work.

C. Discuss raw idea with stakeholders

Once you have decided on what start discussing viability of the idea with various stakeholders like children, parents, partners, app developers like Arkay Apps etc. However, do it with precaution, reveal only what it needed and not more because securing the idea is also important.

3. Reach to us and we will get there together

During any time in this process, you can reach to us to discuss the idea, its viability, possible technologies, platform to be used etc. We would be very happy to help you out in every way possible.

4. App development, launching and realising dream

Then we will build the application, test, re-build, re-test until it finally matches your requirements. You can launch it in a grand way. Look at rising download numbers and bank balance and start questing for next big thing!

Arkay Apps October 20, 2020 0 Comments

Android

People and Identity, Conversation notifications new features!

Introduction

In the first week of 11 weeks of Android, it has lots of new features that are included new notifications & new sign-in feature as well. This article is focused on the new conversation notification feature that is available in the upcoming Android OS version 11.

What’s New!

Stay in touch with your loved once with the new conversation notification feature. Show conversation with people with the use of a bubble (Eg. Facebook messenger). The goal of this new feature is to The People in your life feel like they’re right there with you. With the use of conversation, you’ll be able to start a new conversation through the pinnable shortcut that is available in the conversation section in the notification pan.

Check updates of conversation which will now appear above notification in notification pan. Also, you can switch to any conversation you had with your loved once without switching through the other apps with the use of a bubble.

How to

Now we will see how to build a conversation shortcuts.

First, you need to publish a shortcut and set it as longlived so it can be used across OS features.
Shortcuts are a combination of metadata and properties.
Publish regular shortcuts with essential details like icon, name & intent, hence these details are optional, it is not mandatory to add these details.
Set longlived as true so the Operating System knows to keep track of that conversation.

Conversations are not meant for a bot or one-way notifications that users would not like to respond to.

Build conversation

Follow below steps to build a conversation for your app.

To build a conversation there is a recommendation from the android team at google that you need to define the contact or contact details that are related to the conversation. This is for the Operating System to give more context about that particular conversation that helps in ranking the sharing suggestions.
First, build a person object with details about the contact.
Then, create a shortcut referencing your person object and set as longlived.
The operating system can handle only limited publish limit at a time,pushDynamicShortcut()this method automatically handles the shortcut publish limit.

If you still confused then consider the below code snippet provided by the Android team at Google.

Manage shortcuts

Shortcuts that are set as longlived are stored in the system cache.
Developers are also can remove cached conversations programmatically with the use ofremovelongLivedShortcuts().
But cache shortcuts can only be removed if the user has no longer access to that conversation.

Awesome things can be done with the conversation shortcuts

Aside from being pinned on the launcher, conversations are also meant to appear in the notification bar above the notifications.
Conversation notifications make it easier to see the sender’s avatar, name, and message.
Conversations are also prioritized on the sharing menu.

Enhanced features

Conversations have more advanced enhanced features, such as users can long press on the conversation notification to set it as a priority.

Let’s take a look at priority conversations deeply.

Priority conversations

Priority conversations providing a quick setting to make it more important conversation visible and easy to get access to that conversation.
Priority conversations have appeared at the top of the conversation section.
As well as sender’s avatar is always on display, lock screen & status bar when you get an update of that conversation.
Priority conversations are also breakthroughDo Not Disturb (If set) mode of your device.

Adding conversation shortcuts to notifications

It is very easy to set conversation shortcuts in messaging style as you’ve done hard-work previously (while building conversations).
To add shortcuts to notifications set theshortcutIDfrom the conversation shortcut object that is defined in the previous code snippet.
Use the previous person object when constructing message style notifications.
OK, that’s it, once you publish this notification this will appear in the conversation section in notification pane (bar).

If you still confused then consider the below code snippet provided by the Android team at Google.

Conversation notification without shortcut

Many other existing apps in which the chatting functionality is there are published messaging-style notifications will still appear in the conversation section until these apps target Android 11.
Drawback-: Users won’t be able to make this conversation bubble type for multi-tasking & they won’t be able to mark these conversations as a priority.

Now, we will take a look at the google’s educational tips for the users -:Bubbles

Bubbles

The best example for the bubble is the Facebook messenger app’s functionality that users were able to chat without switching the apps with the use of a bubble.

Bubbles allow users to chat multitasking without switching between the app.
Bubbles are float over what you’re doing on your phone when you click on it.
Tapping on the bubble you can see floating conversation window will appear from that window you can read and respond to chat.
Users can also select the conversation bubble right from the notification (In the notification, one button is there to open the conversation bubble).
Users can also go back from the chat to what they’re doing previously by collapsing outside the bubble.
Bubbles make it very easy to get back to chat without switching apps.
Developers can reuse the conversation intent to create bubble metadata.

Let’s see how this can be achieved.

Constructing bubble

Bubble constructed using adding the metadata of the bubble to the notifications.
It’s up to developers that if they’re using the same intent or reuse the intent from conversation shortcut.

If you still confused then consider the below code snippet provided by the Android team at Google.

Bubble permission

Users can create bubbles in two ways:
1. Bubble for the specific chat. (By tapping bubble button on notification)
2. Bubble for all chat. (Requires users to adjust app bubble setting)
When users create the bubble for specific notification, it means that it is important and they want quickly and easily accessible.

That’s it for this article folks, we cover all the new features and functionality of Notification and Conversations in Android 11.

Darshit Anjaria July 4, 2020 0 Comments