Radial recently created an application for the Loveland Museum. It’s an iPad game that teaches students how to correctly address an envelope. As a company, we decided to donate the work involved in building this application as a service to our community.
Here are some reasons we decided to take on the effort of building this game and donating it to the museum.
Reason One: Community Involvement
First of all, we get to be involved in our community. One of our core values is collaboration. This effort allowed us to collaborate with a local institution. We are able to contribute to them and the citizens who visit and access that institution.
The Loveland Museum/Gallery is a wonderful resource to people of all ages who live in Northern Colorado. The application we created for them, Snail Mail, is part of a permanent history exhibit called Sweetheart Town, USA. That exhibit focuses on the history of Loveland’s Valentine re-mailing program. By helping the museum create a better exhibit, we are helping visitors learn more about the history of Loveland.
Reason Two: License to Explore
Trying out a new technology on a tight deadline is always a bit of a risk. With this project we knew we could build as complex or simple an app as we wanted as long as it met some basic goals. That gave us the opportunity to gain staff expertise in a newer technology designed for building mobile apps: React Native. We got to explore different aspects of the API, including the Animated library, as we built the app. Our staff is overall much more competent with React Native after building this project.
Additionally, building a game allowed us to experiment with more complex interactions. We got to do more with touch, drag and drop and swapping elements. While we do not plan to start designing games, gaining expertise in this area will help us make our existing apps more user-friendly and fun to use.
Reason Three: A Marketing Opportunity
Let’s be honest: Doing something altruistic also gives us a forum to tell our story as an app development company. We believe that telling your own story is one of the most powerful things you can do as a business.
This is a chance to share with the community about what we do. The story we want to tell is that we build great web and mobile applications. We also listen deeply to customers, and we love working with external support like illustrators and UX designers to make our applications sparkle and shine!
Even though building this app in the midst of winter holidays and running a full-time small business stretched our resources a bit as a company, we are committed to continuing to use our technical skills to improve our community. Stay tuned for what we come up with next!