Case Study: iPhone App for Study Cards

An iPhone application for study cards makes exam prep less painful and opens up a global market for one New Zealand company.

What is the basic idea for the app?
Our client, Really Useful Resources (RUR), publishes educational content for students to prepare for exams. Their basic product is study cards in a ring binder. Each card offers just a couple questions at a time so you can quickly move through them. These study cards port well to the iPhone screen. With the multi-touch interface you can swipe between the cards and create a fun user experience.

What problem does it solve?
Lots of students have iPhones and iPod touches and they like to use them. The Study Card app is more appealing and more convenient since you don’t have to carry around a ring binder of cards. And when you make it digital you can do things like tracking progress so the experience is enhanced and personalized. Encouragement is built-in.

What is the Business Case?
Everything is moving to mobile devices and RUR sees this as the future. Not having a big warehouse of printed cards, they save on printing and distribution. They can focus on content, their core asset, and creating the best possible learning material. That’s a major shift in thinking. It’s really about giving customers what they want: cheaper and faster, and in a way that’s less wasteful.

Selling physical cards RUR is pretty much limited to NZ market. But digitally they can open up to a global market. For the “Maths” module, it comes down to different “units” with Imperial and metrics versions. 

How did you get started?
We began by gathering requirements, then producing a mock-up using Balsamiq. We developed the app using Xcode. Our biggest concern was verifying that the slides look good on screen. We realized they were readable but could be better so we added landscape view and zooming support. The result is a flexible high-quality card in your choice of layout.

What did your client think?
RUR loved it. They told us it was exactly how they’d anticipated it would look. I attribute that to the fact we built the mock-ups first. We delivered what they expected and exceeded it with landscape and zooming support.

What about submitting it to the Apple Store?
We guided them through the license process and getting set up in the store. It’s quite a complicated process to follow the strict guidelines Apple lays out. Then it takes about 2 weeks until it shows up for sale.

What’s next?
Add more content in different study areas. We started with “Maths level 1” but built the app in a way that it’s easily extendable to other subjects. Of course we'll look for opportunities to improve the user experience, like being able to add notes to your study cards... that might be a useful feature.