CASE STUDY

Doddle mobile app gets homework moving

Doddle’s self-marking, curricula-linked resources help 15,000 teachers to quickly and easily set homework tasks for around 320,000 students.

We developed the original platform back in 2012 – and have supported it ever since. But Doddle V4.0, complete with a mobile app, marked an exciting leap forward in the mobile user experience for students.

Challenge

Today’s GCSE specifications mean students must continually absorb and refresh knowledge outside the classroom. Improving the mobile experience was a priority for Doddle, and they asked us to create a mobile app for students.

Key points

Bespoke platform
Mobile app
Agile development
Student experience

Solution

Doddle chose to take a hybrid app approach – so we created a mobile app wrapper for their website. Making sure the app communicated well with Doddle’s databases – for account authentication, opening resources, launching quizzes and so on – was the crux of our technical challenge.

We developed the original Doddle platform and have used Agile to deliver Doddle releases for some time; this provided a sound methodology for implementing the huge user interface changes of version 4.0, as well as mobile app features.

Cancelled homework, extended deadlines, short notice assignments, early submission, delayed start dates…

Our team audited and analysed seemingly endless potential use cases to ensure notifications worked reliably not just across devices, but across scenarios. In close consultation with the Doddle team we categorised ideal, likely and edge cases.

Paul Mallaband said:

“The direct communication we always get with the whole team at Can was invaluable… developers right in the detail of the code were forthcoming to say, ‘Have you thought about…’ or, ‘What will the end point of this be?’ – meaning we could anticipate problems.

Results

By making the student area fully mobile responsive, and creating an app with notifications, we’ve helped Doddle make it even easier for students to keep on top of homework.

“Our team has some technical knowledge – but we’re not software developers. We’ll come up with lovely ideas, not appreciating the associated technical challenges. Some agencies would just take our spec and run with it. But Can Studios interrogate it and improve it – which saves us time and money, and ultimately delivers a better product.”

Paul Mallaband
Product Owner, Doddle

“Doddle has great resources and we want it to be as easy as possible for students to get the most out of them. Now they can hop on to check or complete tasks whenever and wherever they need to.”