Platform and app for digital teaching materials

Customer

Awards

- 1x Shortlist

LearnFox makes it very easy to publish printed teaching materials digitally with copy protection. Based on the idea of binApp we have rebuilt the app on a completely new technology and created a matching administration interface.

To the LearnFox To bin's own publishing house

The story

In 2020, we took over the further development of binApp and first replaced the backend and the database. Knowing that the LearnFox project would follow, we immediately built the system to be multi-client capable. When replacing the data access layer in the binApp, we quickly realized that further development based on Angular Ionic and Redux would be unpredictably cumbersome and time-consuming.

The plan

The next step was to create the SaaS platform "LearnFox" so that other publishers could offer their publications digitally. Compatibility with the requirements of the in-house publishing house had to be maintained at all costs. To equip ourselves for the future, we planned a technology upgrade to Flutter.

The challenge

Rebuild an existing app and expand it into a SaaS platform. New design, new technology, same functionality - but a little faster, a little better and a little nicer. Plus a web-based administration interface in which publishers can manage their publications and authorizations.

Our solution

To look better. That's why our designers started developing the LearnFox brand right away, while the software engineers took care of the technical foundation. After that, we continuously created screen designs for the various functions and implemented them sprint by sprint. The greatest complexity was the implementation of a complete PDF viewer in C with a game-engine-based annotation layer, as none existed for Flutter.

The Facts

Over 5,000 users
Available on Android, iOS, macOS and Windows
Client and offline capable
PDF viewer with annotation option
Synchronization across multiple devices

«We feel that we are in good hands with the smartive team. We greatly appreciate their great expertise and solution-oriented working style.»

Markus Fröhlich

Publishing director bin cooperative

A look behind the scenes

Technology

We implemented the new app with Flutter. This is perfect for native apps: multiple platforms, a single code base.

The Swiss IAM platform ZITADEL is used for user management. What is it good for? Find out: IAM.

A gaming engine

Since there is no canvas in Flutter, we have integrated the graphx gaming engine for the annotation layer in the PDF viewer.

And the administration?

The app is the highlight. Of course it is! But the content also needs to be managed. The users themselves cannot (yet?) upload books. That's done by the publisher. And that's where the web-based LearnFox Admin Tool comes in. We have built a Next.js application with Tailwind (in the LearnFox look-and-feel, of course).

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