Product designer creates free multilingual guide to Oxford
The creator of the app shared his story of how to design an app and AI's possibilities
A new multi-lingual guide to Oxford, Oxford City Guide, has been released on September 3rd, but it started as a project just for the creator’s families.
Alex Pawlack, 37, the creator of the app and a freelance product designer who works for multiple large companies, gave Hybrid the behind-the-scenes with his various endeavours: language, time, and technology issues.
He said: “I’m French and my parents were coming one time, and I thought they could use the app to learn about the city when I don’t have time for them.”
Alex’s partner is Japanese, and he wanted to reduce the anxiety of not only her family but also Japanese people who struggle in an unfamiliar city, and the difficulty of the language barrier.
The app is free and available in English, French, and Japanese with reading and audio. Users can check interesting buildings while walking around, but also see some tours, such as the Oxford colleges tour and the historic pubs tour.
The application users can also use an audio version, which enables them to walk around the city while listening to the highlights of the buildings with geo-location. He explained why he focuses on the audio-guide aspect.
Alex added: “The app was thought firstly to be an audio guide because I want to be able to look with my eyes at the architecture of the building while learning about its story. Using multiple of our senses at the same time.
“At this stage, we even forget about our phones, which is great since most of us are looking at our phones for hours during the day. I believe a good design uses technology but can make it disappear for the user.” He added the original point of view as a product designer.
The struggle for language
He said he struggled to translate other languages: “ I don’t speak Japanese, so I had to find people to help me to see if it was working, if it was good Japanese or not. I asked my wife, and she could tell me some words.”
“I think also it’s because Oxford has a specific English language, like the building, they say it in a way. When you translate it from written English, it’s not the same Katakana* they’re going to use it, because they should have a British accent, right? So, I think that was one of the struggles.”
Towards a world where everyone can build apps
He also continued that there is a difficulty on the technical side.
“ I always tried to learn coding* before, but I never could put together a full project. I would be stuck sometimes, either in the course or making a personal project. AI helped me overcome those barriers.”
“For example, for development, AI knows what I’m good at when creating an app and what I’m most likely not good at.”
He emphasised: “More and more people can develop thanks to new AI tools.”
“I didn’t do the development before, and thanks to AI, I can do it now.”
He added: “I think learning how to code can be intimidating, it makes me think of the first time someone learns how to cook and is afraid of burning the food. Now with AI, we can ask why we failed and understand by ourselves. This helps a lot with the impostor syndrome when we start learning a new subject.”
The challenges will continue
After he developed Oxford City Guide, he had other challenges to overcome.
“Sometimes I would have a bug, and the college wouldn’t show, or it would show in the wrong place, for example. So I had to check manually. Everything was right. It took some time at one point. “
“I need to have proper and deeper feedback, trying to ask people how they use the app, that’s something I should be doing to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what I need to change to make it better.”
This app will be updated with some functions, too, he said.
“I think a lot of people come from very different backgrounds in Oxford, and there could be a lot more languages that I could integrate into the app.”
He added: “When I built it, because I was here for like 3 years. Some people ask me, Do you have this on the app? And I sometimes would be like, No, I don’t, because so far, there are like 100 points for now. I want to increase it to about 700.”
If you’re interested in using Oxford City Guide application, we welcome some feedback in the comment section.
*Katakana…one of the two sets of syllabic Japanese script. Katakana is used to write scientific terms, official documents, and words borrowed from other languages.