Back to other projectsAt the University I took part in two masters programs: media design and visual art education. These two fields merged into one in my diploma project where I decided that I would like to design an application for teenagers presenting Hungarian poems. These poems are mandatory to learn in high school and, despite their beauty, are quickly forgotten or remain underappreciated.
I was really interested in new ways of reading based on an observation of how people process information. Instead of following a linear path, we often rather scan things and gather information from more places at the same time. I wanted to see if it is possible to represent a linear text in an interactive way.
I started with one poem which takes place on a famous bridge in Budapest. My goal was to organize the information about the text in a very intuitive and fun way so the student won't get overwhelmed and bored with information in block text. I tried to use minimal visual effects to keep the text in the focus. For example I only "put" the poem on the bridge visually.
It was very interesting to test the application with teens. I tested the collaborative parts too by involving highschool teachers who used the app during their classes. Afterwards we interviewed students about what they thought of the app usage during the lecture, and also we tested the rest of the app for individual learning outcomes.
We heard some interesting responses. It turned out that students hate carrying their books, especially as they google the texts on their phones anyway, rather than opening a book. White paper with black letters were often deemed simply too boring.
The collaboration part between teachers and students was extremely well-received, because they could share their thoughts on the lesson and results with teachers and other students from within the app itself.
You can read more about the project in Hungarian here.
Video about testing in Hungarian:
