The team of tapp-mobile It is formed by three friends expert engineers in Mechanical Engineering They have in common their passion for design and technology. From the moment they discovered the possibilities of mobile apps they went to work to offer their vision and their proposal putting a lot focus on the social. Your greatest asset is your ability to listen to customers and meet their needs in the best possible way. For tapp-mobile each client and project are unique, so they always start as if it were the first time, they work with enthusiasm and without losing the reference and experience gained with their previous work. In this interview in Peques and Más we present to Javier Tolsá from tapp-mobile which will explain to us your business vision and practical experience developing applications for mobile devices.
What is tapp-mobile
Tapp is a project that combines friendship and business perspectives. We met at the University while studying engineering and had the opportunity to start this business making it compatible with our work. With tapp we want to study what are the possibilities of a company with a social business model.
How the idea of creating applications for children on mobile devices
When we started the activity, we had the opportunity to develop the app How are you? which was focused on children and people with ASD (autism spectrum disorder). From that moment, we realized the possibilities that this type of apps had to create and decided to focus on those developments that would report some kind of benefit to our users. We are open to developing applications for an adult audience that respects our model, but it is true that, for now, we are focusing on children's apps.
What is the current status of Tapp developments and what are the future plans
We have two apps published How are you Y Termotic, with some maturity, since we have been making periodic updates including those improvements that most of our users asked us for. Right now, we are immersed in the process of porting these two apps to Android and thus reach as many users as possible.
As for new developments, we are designing an app focused on children with attention deficit. In addition, we are outlining another app for people with ASD but it is still in a very early phase.
And, of course, we are open to new collaborations.
The comments and feedback we receive from our applications is very positive
How applications are working and what parents and teachers are telling you
The type of projects we have accepted is intended for a small percentage of tablet users. However, within our market, the volume of downloads is good enough to continue investing our free time in tapp.
The comments and feedback we receive is very positive, both on generic children's app pages, and on specific app websites for people with ASD. In addition, our marketing today is only the mouth to ear and we do not sponsor any of the publications. That is to say, each one of the news that you can read about our apps is published for the interest that they arouse in the editor of the web or of the newspaper.
What business models are triumphing in applications
Without a doubt, the freemium model. In short, it is the model that consists of allowing a free download with restricted access to the contents of the app, to subsequently unlock the content with purchases within the app, in-app purchases.
The advantage of the freemium model is that the user can test the app before proceeding with the app purchase. This fact is especially relevant given the great offer of current apps and that "demo" apps are no longer allowed for example in the Apple App Store. We are in the process of including it in our next applications, but including the necessary control barriers so that only parents and teachers can proceed with the payment.
The advantage of the freemium model is that the user can try the app before buying more features
How do you establish that an application is ready to be launched?
Generally, in tapp we work with collaborators so we do an intense design work with them that helps us define the product in the initial phase of development. This allows us to focus on an idea from the beginning and avoid design corrections when the development of the app is very advanced. The cost in terms of time to make small changes when the app is almost finished is very high, so we try to avoid it as much as possible.
When we reach the test phase, we try to be tested by teachers, parents or children. For technical reasons, this process was very tedious, at least on iOS. Apple has put in iOS8 at the service of developers a tool that will allow several users to install apps in development phase in their terminals. This will help us to receive more and better feedback before the app is published.
Even so, if you check the history of updates of our apps, you can see that we continually incorporate the most demanded requests that our users send us by email or via Twitter.
What profiles of people do you have in the company regarding application development?
We are three industrial engineers and, thanks to our training, we are able to fully understand the app development process, and of course, put it into practice. The great luck we have is that each of us has a different profile, which allows us to complement each other, and above all, understand each other's needs. Thus, there is a person primarily focused on design, another to the programming and another last to tasks of management.
Who is helping you to work on the usability of applications and in the design of interactivity
We spend a lot of time trying new ideas with which the user can interact with the app when we are not immersed in a specific development and learn from articles on User Experience and Interface. In addition, we use the knowledge of one of our members as he did a doctoral thesis in this field.
On the other hand, each development helps us collect experiences from our users, from which we learn how to use the apps and how to make them more accessible. This fact is of vital importance for us since we must comply with a series of features in terms of usability, readability, colors, sounds or the app's own flow. These characteristics are very different when it is designed for children or when it is designed for adults, so we dedicate a specific job to make the final product accessible, inclusive and maximize the independence of the child from the app.
The objective of tapp is that their developments go beyond entertainment and that they satisfy some existing need
How tapp applications can be used at school
Starting at the end, the last update of Termotic It includes a didactic guide that we developed with Rosa Aparicio (ipadsyautismo) where different ways of using the app are proposed, both at school and at home.
App How are you He doesn't have a teaching guide as such yet. However, it is also an app dedicated to the recognition of emotions. The objective is that the app is used with some frequency to be able to track the reconstruction skills of emotions, or the facial representation of them through photographs.
In the development of such specific applications and with such exclusive content, who is your competition in Spain and in the world?
Our ability to communicate and publicize our apps is relatively limited. We could say that any study that has a communication department, however small, becomes our competitor.
Our competitors are medium-sized developers dedicated to making entertainment apps, but that indirectly deal with issues that we address. If your games can be exported to the classroom or to therapy sessions, they are introduced into our market, which is still a niche within the great business of developing apps.
Turning the tortilla around, thanks to our good competitors, we are able to learn what they do, improve our work and identify those gaps where new ideas have not yet appeared.
What role can teachers play in expanding your product?
Through two routes mainly:
- The first and most important, using our developments in the classroom, because that is the main objective of our work. And if the tools we put at your disposal, you can share it with other teachers recommending its use
- The second way is by contacting us proposing collaborations for the development of new tools. As we have already mentioned, the objective of tapp is that its developments go beyond entertainment and that they satisfy some existing need. We cannot think of a better way to respond to a need detected in the classroom than through the teachers themselves. The reality is that it is they who best know their students, and those who ask questions of style "It would be great if an app helped me ..." This is how the projects begin.
How can parents support children in reading using mobile devices
From our point of view, and in the case of children, mobile devices cannot replace the traditional book. What we believe is that these devices should provide an enriched experience in front of the paper book. That is to say, that these adapted books teach them everything positive that reading provides and in this way, children feel the need to devote part of their free time to reading.
The contents should therefore be adapted to this end, respecting both the content and the message of the book and the spirit of the author. It would be interesting to be able to work on a project with these characteristics.
We believe, in general, that children have to have a balance between the use of new technologies and traditional educational and entertainment media
And here the interview, I thank very much Javier Tolsá his generosity in the answers and I wish him and his partners many successes in tapp-mobile. I met Javier on the occasion of the Maetiva meeting where I was able to observe the importance of his work for recognition and for how teachers used their applications in their work with their students. I think they do an excellent job and I hope they can continue to meet their goals of helping children learn and develop skills while entertaining.
