Hearfolio Games & learning
Making serious reading fit around the day.
An audio-study app built around documents, a listening queue and the unglamorous work of reliable playback.
Project statusiOS audio-study app
How it came about
Hearfolio starts with a familiar mismatch: there is more useful material to read than there is convenient time to sit and read it. Documents, articles and coursework tend to arrive in formats designed for a screen. Listening creates another way into that material.
I built an iOS app around importing content and returning to it through a listening queue, bookmarks, notes and study organisation. It is aimed at longer, more deliberate reading as well as the article that would otherwise remain open in a tab.
The difficult part
Text-to-speech is only one part of the problem. A PDF can contain awkward layouts. A web page can include navigation and unrelated text. An import that technically succeeds can still produce something unpleasant to listen to.
Then there is playback itself: pause, resume, interruptions, the next item in the queue and returning to a document later. I have had to test these as connected parts of listening. A clean import means little if the app loses my place when I stop, or makes it difficult to continue with the next document.
What I learnt
I have learnt to follow the whole journey. It is not enough to demonstrate that text can become audio; I need to check whether somebody can import their material, listen, stop and come back without losing their place.
The lesson is quite practical. Reliability is a feature people notice most when it is missing. Better handling of an awkward document or an interrupted session can be more valuable than adding another impressive option to the home screen.