Education

Dr Mohamed Al-Galiz

A preacher’s lecture series, downloaded once and played with no signal.

Role: Android developer
Platforms: Android
Year: 2020
Status: Shipped
Stack: JavaAndroid
Links: Google Play

What it is

A single speaker's lecture series, published as an Android app. Four series on the shelf, a numbered list of talks inside each, and a player. That is the whole product, and the restraint is the point: the listener came for one person's voice and should reach it in two taps.

Why offline

Audio over a metered connection is a decision the listener has to keep making, and a lecture is forty minutes long. Downloaded once, a series plays on a commute through a tunnel, in a car with no signal, and on a phone with no plan left for the month. The store listing says OfflIne in its title because that is the feature.

The opening screen: the speaker’s name set as a gold calligraphic mark on deep blue, and under it three buttons — the series list, share the app, and more apps — with a line of remembrance pinned along the bottom.

The series list, four engraved plaques stacked down the screen: the story of Ibrahim, Imagine, Days of Love, and On the Road.

Inside a series: nine numbered talks listed in order — an introduction, the day of Eid, the miracle of the birds, and on — above a transport bar with shuffle, skip, play and repeat, and a scrub line reading one minute eighteen.

Decisions

Series first, episode second. These talks run in order and lose their argument out of it, so the shelf shows series and the list inside shows numbers. Shuffle exists, but it is not what the screen opens on.

Repeat, because the audience rewinds. A transport bar with shuffle and repeat is unremarkable in a music player and load-bearing here — the reason people return to a talk is to hear one part of it again.

No account, nothing to sign into. The app asks for nothing, which is why it can be handed to someone and simply work.