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Building out of necessity

After moving to Sweden, I knew it was important to learn the language to help integrate myself into my new surroundings. After months of self-studying, I had read many children's books, completed Duolingo, and reached a level where I could converse adequately. However, I knew that to improve my language skills further, I needed to write more. Unable to find apps that could help with my writing, I decided to build my own app to help me learn Swedish.

Designing the app

The idea was simple: I wanted to be presented with a simple sentence in English. I would then translate the text into Swedish letter by letter, but I couldn't continue to the next letter until the current one was correct. By doing this repeatedly, I would naturally pick up spelling and grammar patterns. If I ever found myself stuck and unable to progress to the next letter, I could ask for a hint and see the answer.

I quickly designed a simple app in Figma, knowing that I would build it myself and use it to help me learn the language.

Building the app

Since this was an actual tool I wanted to build for myself, I didn't want to make the app too complicated. Given my coding skills at the time were adequate, I was somewhat limited but managed to create a working prototype.

Although I wasn't able to build it to the exact specifications I laid out in Figma, it was sufficient for me to experiment with and help me learn Swedish.

Creating gamification

I could see potential in this project, but my developer skills would need to improve to include the full experience. From implementing sign-in functionality and onboarding to incorporating “Duolingo-type” gamification, I can envision this app helping users learn a language.

For now, I'm content with it just helping me learn Swedish, even if I'm only using the prototype.