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Learning App Development from Ted Talks?

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9 min read

Are you a big fan of TED media? Or have you ever watched at least one episode of the TED Conferences? Whatever your regularity to this global community is, you’ve definitely heard about this platform, right? However, familiarity is rarely equated with the usage to the max. That’s why we’re here for you! Let Dashdevs share with you a few incredible cases of app development within the last 3 years. What for? For you to finally believe in the power of the good and relevant business idea! Be sure you can write your history in the app creation, and we can gladly help you with the best technological solution in case you need it.

And now we’re inviting you to the fresh, astonishing examples of apps that have appeared in the market as the desired service to the ones dreaming about it for a long time. Learn on them to become the new rescue for the underserved!

The idea under the app creation: A job loss, a divorce, medical emergencies, or family grief — these are the problems that can unexpectedly happen in the life of anyone. The biggest pitfall is that you’re almost likely to be taken off guard when some of these unpleasant troubles appear: both morally and financially. When the former is easier to handle, the latter can severely pull the rug out from under you. What’s more, in most civil cases, in the US, you’re not provided with a free lawyer. Thus, it raises the question of what to do at the time of trial.

As a rule, the victim is advised to resort to the help of the professional, and that creates a paradox: in the US, you’re to find and pay $1.5k to the lawyer to tell the court that you desperately need the state’s financial support. As a result, the bigger part of the low-income Americans can’t fight for their civil legal rights at all. How dare we speak about any kind of equality after this?

Luckily, there’s a person who has found the way out — Rohan Pavuluri. He’s the civil rights entrepreneur who created the Upsolve app to instruct people who can’t afford an attorney and need legal assistance. Literally, the app quickly collects the basic information about your specific situation through the form filling and allows you to freely file for bankruptcy.

Value to users: Upsolve turns bankruptcy from the scary word into an effective legal tool to pay off the debt and resolve the bitter financial problems that are always happening on the spur of the moment. What’s more, the app is well-thought to resolve 2 issues: the usual complexity of legal documentation (the lack of understanding here serves as a barrier to fight over the civil rights) and the unnecessary lawyer’s intervention (not all cases require much consulting as if you’re seeing a doctor when having a headache). All in all, this app novelty makes ordinary people’s life better by helping them to overcome the financial shock and stay afloat after that.

Are you thrilled? Watch it here!

Ellora, Adivasi Radio, & Karya: Mircosoft’s Response to the Modern Tech Disruption

The idea under the app creation: Being on the ridge of innovation, Mircosoft enters the market with new and new solutions to meet and stir further digital disruption. Here, the conversation revolves around 3 pet projects of the well-known corporation: Ellora, Adivasi Radio, and Karya. The first 2 are to push the speech theory technology, while the last one concerns digital literacy growth in rural communities. And you need to know that these Microsoft app babies have shown up not without a reason! So, what’s the plan behind their creation? Let’s grasp it one by one!

Ellora is Microsoft’s reply to the limited natural language processing (NLP), which successfully covers only 4 players: Arabic, English, Chinese, and Spanish. While these languages are characterized by the huge speech patterns database, the rest of the world languages aren’t so rich in the resources collection, especially if we take the small communities. Thanks to this app, the other languages have a chance to avoid cultural extinction and be somehow popularized in the convenient digital form. To be exact, by uniting tech providers, educational institutions, the non-for-profit book publisher, and the community members, Ellora already manifested notable success with the Gondi language — the first-ever 200 books are now translated in Gondi for its natives to enjoy.

As for Adivasi Radio is concerned, something similar happened in the other format. Within the app, the users are provided with access to news and articles in the Gondi language. In this case, the Hindi-to-Gondi translation contributed to the solid generation of parallel data to strengthen language promotion opportunities.

In its turn, Karya is targeted at educating the rural population with digital skills and allowing them to earn some money on that. Being tested on the Amale community, the app also indirectly leads to the advancing of rare languages and their community’s value. Thus, placing the native speakers in the center of storytelling, Microsoft’s product proves the possibility of language development.

Value to users: Never before in the history of NLP, AI, and speech technology, the creators have moved so close to the overall pipeline formation. Undeniably, that’s it! Now this framework can be extrapolated to the other context, and we’ll probably witness the language’s digital landscape in work.

Are you interested in the whole story? Watch it here!

Gojek & Jumia: Online Marketplaces that Make Difference

The idea under the app creation: What’s your attitude towards the growth of online marketplaces, like Uber, Airbnb, or Amazon? Now they exist merely in each sector of the business activity, but their perception is usually two-folded. On the one hand, they’re seen as the technological breakthrough that is expected to improve the customers’ experiences. On the other hand, however, some view the online marketplaces as intruders into civilian life, which can be blamed for the market fluctuations and possible innocent people’s job losses. From this perspective, Uber can be considered as both good and evil. Whereas it allows users to abandon car ownership and remain mobile, Uber causes the taxi drivers’ job withdrawals. Hence, where’s the happy middle? Probably, it lays in the service’s pros predominance over its cons.

Specifically, there are positive cases when the act of online marketplace occupation benefits the majority in the end. The first comes Gojek, which is like Uber but for motorbikes in Indonesia. This app has applied the new strategy of embracing all the transportation options in one place: in addition to the core app’s service, you can check the public transport schedule or find the bus for the long-distance trip. Due to this care, both Gojek’s moto drivers and the service recipients exhibit deep trust in the platform, which is currently valued at $10bn.

The second successful instance is Jumia, the African analog of Amazon, which elicits no fear on the part of the small-business community because of the altered investing model. In particular, the Jumia app readily spends finances on African entrepreneurs’ indoctrination. Through the e-learning platform, the merchants can acquire the business and digital skills, and this adds much to the virtual marketplace’s value. Ultimately, according to the estimates, this online University is expected to grow up 3m additional jobs by 2025.

Value to users: Despite some popular skepticism, the online marketplace can benefit everyone in the long run. What matters here is not to limit the whole sense to the buyers and sellers matching but add real advantage to the clients as Gojek and Jumia did.

Wanna learn the story from A to Z? Watch it here!

FlikShop: A Cure from Prisoners’ Depression

The idea under the app creation: 8 years of incarceration, and Marcus Bullock has decided to take the step towards improving the American criminal justice system. Though it may sound a little ambitious, the Apple Store hasn’t had the app solution for addressing the prisoners’ alienation, depression, and other lack-of-communication-related concerns.

Having committed the car theft with the gun at his hands, the 15-year old Bullock was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment. The first 2 were spent in the state of refusal from the surrounding reality, and then his mother’s care and support hinted to him how to walk this through. In fact, his mother was sending Bullock letters and photos under the motto ’there’s a life after the prison’ to sustain his belief in the approaching end of jail time. Due to such moral support, the convict succeeded in overcoming this tough period and ended up with a decent, law-abiding, and career-oriented life after the release.

Knowing that the prison, above all, is a communication disaster and continuing the interaction with his ex-cellmates, Bullock faced the difficulty of the constant photo printing, letter writing, and sending all that to the prisoners. Inspired by the idea to automate these processes, he invented FilkShop. The app allows making the real-time photo, attaching the quick commentary to that, and sending it to the addressee only for $0.99. A decent alternative to the expensive prison calls, the tech solution was sold like hotcakes!

Value to users: Now any prisoner in any prison all over the world can receive the postcard with the warm, encouraging, and motivational words that will make a day or even will add to the overall fight with the imprisonment challenge. At the same time, the sentenced felons can feel lesser detachment from the out-of-the-jail life, which is like a breath of fresh air for them.

Willing to dive deeper? Watch it here!

A Lab Inside the Body: Better Diagnosis & Proactive Treatment

The idea under the app creation: What’s usually done to check the patient’s health condition if one assumes the probability of the serious disease? Very often the contemporary medical science suggests biopsy as the disease detection method. This medical investigation procedure permits withdrawing the tiny tissue particles out of the human body to put it under thorough observation. Normally, it helps to come up with accurate diagnosis results, but not without some exceptions. These are brains, lungs, spinal cords, and other hard-to-reach organs that leave some freedom for error. Why so? First, as you’ve got it, not all tissue samples can be analyzed in this case physically. Second, the doctor is exactly unaware of which tissue can be hazardous to the patient’s organism and can accidentally choose the wrong one. Consequently, the final medical report can be compromised.

So what? Any other methods? Yes, there are also blood tests and MRIs, but the trouble with them is in their failure to trace the molecular and cellular changes. That means that no proactive treatment of the disease is possible till the time the symptoms are clearly seen. An example of this sorrowful scenario is multiple sclerosis, which can’t be investigated through the traditional outside-in approach to diagnostics.

The promising answer to this situation is given by Aaron Morris, the immuno-engineer offering the reverse methodology — the inside-out approach. Namely, his vision is to create the implantable sites, which are similar to the ones in the body, and inject them inside the patient’s organism. By this, Morris insists on the greater precision of the disease diagnosis and its onset prognosis, which can be achieved by the researcher’s penetration into the molecular level of analysis.

Value to users: Though the app is still in the process of development, we’ve decided to add this case to our list because it perfectly articulates the significance of the new technology for the other branch’s progress — medicine. Besides, Morris’s approach has been already tested to diagnose metastatic cancer, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and organ transplant rejection. Isn’t that enough for confirming the veracity of the scientist’s hypothesis?

To find out more about the case, watch it here!

Who Is Next to Profit from Apps Development?

Such abrupt and valuable transformation can storm in any sphere of our present-day life, so your task is to be attentive to the community’s needs, creative in terms of design and innovational decisions, and ready to act. Don’t miss the opportunity of deploying the app that will become another hit in the market! Just follow your gut and contact the real professionals to help you make your wildest fantasy come true! The DashDevs team is always waiting for hearing from you — contact us and bring real value to the world!

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