Appademy was born in 2011 as a personal project to improve the educational environment of my class at high school. Named after the combination of the words app and academy, I started publicly sharing content as Appademy in 2013.

The first public ideas from this project were TypeNPlay, an Android app to create true or false quizzes and, a web portal for the school’s computers. Although TypeNPlay never reached a release-ready version (being replaced later by OpenTest), the web portal, which included a calendar and some other useful information about the school, became the landing page of many computers.

Under Appademy I also developed a YouTube channel with videos explaining different topics from school, which I used to create to revise. These were very varied, with videos about topics in the fields of biology, social sciences and even literature. As of 2020, these videos currently amass over 100k views.

In 2013 I created Cal, a chatbot-like artificial intelligence that used conditioned responses to reply to users in Spanish. The chatbot’s interface uses a cartoonized cat, which reacts showing emotions. After many iterations, Cal was last updated in 2016, and it has currently been used by over 650 thousand users worldwide. Below are some examples of the most recent branding created for Cal, from around 2015.

In 2014, I had the chance to get a scholarship to spend the first quarter of the 2014-15 academic year in Ireland. For one of the units I coursed we were asked to create an entrepreneurial project of some sort. The team I was part of decided to create an app, which I developed.

This was the birth of LyricKey, another Android Appademy app that allowed users to access and save song lyrics. The app also included a website, with additional information, and a Twitter and Facebook page, with updates and tips. This project was the first app ever presented for this unit, and we were recognised in two project fairs around the Dublin county.

After over five updates, the app gained support in English, Spanish, French and German. Bookmarking and playlists were added. In 2018, the LyricKey project was stopped and the app was removed from the Google Play Store. Below is one of the adverts produced for LyricKey.

As part of this marketing effort, several videos and adverts like the one above were produced. In addition to spots like the one below, LyricKey Sessions was born, a series of videos where Lucía García Guadalupe would cover some newly released tracks freshly added to the app. Three of these were produced over the following year.

Thanks to the experience gained with LyricKey, where I learnt how to program a database-like app, I created Omega. This app was built with the biology department and served as a small encyclopedia with body parts. Articles were created and curated by department teachers Cristina León Castro and Fidelina Delgado Sánchez.

The articles were used in class and students could access them via an Android app. In 2015, Omega was awarded Best Educative Initiative in the Canary Islands by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

Around this time, a few other apps were created, such as IceBreaker or Grades. Grades served to log your academic results and create simple statistics about your marks. IceBreaker is an app to exchange conversation starters.

In 2015, two years after the conception of TypeNPlay, I started working on OpenTest. OpenTest was born as an evolution of TypeNPlay, an app to create true or false quizzes. A beta version of the service, which allowed to create four-option questionnaires, was launched in the summer of 2015, being officially released in September. This project allowed me to be awarded Best Educative Initiative in the Canary Islands by CSIC for the second year in a row.

In 2019, a complete overhaul of the project was performed. A new version of the app, with better security and speed improvements was released in September. This new version also allowed users to add pictures to their quizzes and iOS support. Content around this text is from this 2019 rebrand.

In total, the service currently amasses over 15k accounts, and education professionals from around the world have used OpenTest in class as an additional resource to their teaching.

The same year, Appademy saw its biggest change in terms of design, which came with a new website, the migration from a .com domain to an .org, and a new logo. Below are some examples of the new design, which uses Atlas Grotesk as its main font and a very contrasting palette with greys, blues and blacks as its main colours.

This was the first time Appademy had a logo. Inspired by the project’s aim to help students and teachers come together using technology, it resembles a book and a roof. Appademy aims to be both a place for knowledge and a cover for intelectual progress. Additionally, a visual language inspired by paper and glass was also created, to be used in headers and other web elements. Some 3D renders of this identity can be seen below.

Video credits

OpenTest Ad: Music: Ian Piniés Ramírez

Acknowledgements

IES Anaga, Cristina León Castro, Fidelina Delgado Sánchez, Bea Gallo Luño, Lucía García Guadalupe (Lucía Sweeran)

HECTOR MANGAS