In 2005 I started working as a Flash Developer/Designer on the TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning) team at BYU. TALL is the software used by the LDS Church to train its missionaries in different languages before they go to countries around the world. When I came on board we were working on completing a set of animations for German grammar. In some respects this job was similar to my job at Knowledge Gain at first. I spent much of my first few months as a member of the TALL team working on timeline animations and writing simple interactivity with ActionScript 2.
Here's a list of the responsibilities I had while working at BYU:
- Met with language portfolio team leads to design interactive language learning activities and animations
- Worked with graphic artists to improve the overall user experience of TALL
- Developed activities with Flash MX 2004 and CS3 for the following languages: German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Japanese
- Programmed text animations with ActionScript 2 and 3
- Created paper prototypes and performed user testing
- Designed tools to reduce production time (consequentially newer versions of TALL were able to feature more text animations)
- Maintained a dynamic keyboard Flash template for multiple languages
- Used JSFL to improve the Flash IDE
- Provided technical guidance to language teams
- Wrote a Javascript wrapper that enabled communication from TALL to the Flash activities
- Developed Adobe AIR applications using Flex Builder 3
- Investigated new technologies and participated regularly in an Adobe User group
- Created a Flash based internationalized tutorial which featured F4V video
When German was completed I took some time to experiment with better ways of creating text animations. I started work on a library of text animations effects that became useful as we began creating activities for Spanish, Portuguese and French. This library helped reduce production time and inspired creativity in the language teams with whom I worked closely.
Shortly after Adobe CS3 was released we made the jump to ActionScript 3. While continuing work on the creation of language learning activities, I started work on porting the text animation libraries to AS3. These libraries were used in the development of activities for TALL 4.1 languages which include Japanese and Mandarin.
An example of a Spanish activity designed to help users learn verb conjugation. Special consideration was given to users who may be affected by color blindness.
To further expedite the creation of text animations I worked on several AIR applications that generated code and simplified the process of creating activities. One of these applications became a commonly used tool for the language teams. The tool allowed language team members to create animations without needing to learn Flash or ActionScript.
This Memory Match activity is a classic memory game designed to help users learn to recognize Mandarin and Japanese characters.
This activity features two modes. See it and Try it. In See it mode the user watches a set of animations to learn the difference between the Japanese verbs arimasu and imasu. At any time the user can switch to Try it mode where they are able to test their understanding.
Working at BYU was a great experience. As a member of the TALL team I was able to grow tremendously as both a developer and a designer. I was able to work with highly talented people from several different teams to create a product that is used by people from all over the world.
