HOW THIS PROJECT WAS BORN

Having spent almost a decade living abroad, I’ve met hundreds of people who knew very little about my country, but had great interest in learning more about its culture, heritage and language. Many asked me if they could learn Bulgarian online but time after time I struggled to find good-quality interactive and accessible desktop or mobile language apps featuring my mother tongue. Granted there are only 15 million Bulgarian speakers worldwide, I could understand why my language is not on top of the list in Duolingo or Rosetta Stone.

This is how the idea behind this project was born. I wanted to create a free desktop app with simple words and phrases in Bulgarian which could help a true beginner grasp the basics of the language. My aspiration was to give people the ability to get by in all kinds of social settings - meeting new people, traveling, asking for directions, ordering food and drinks from a menu and so on.

I started out with a brainstorming session, trying to figure out the main features of the product. I then spent almost a week experimenting with different color palettes and trying to pin down the best font pair that is both playful and easy to read on screen. I was also building illustrations and creating basic wireframes on Adobe Illustrator to help myself imagine and better visualize the user journey. After I'd finished three or four sample screen blueprints, I got down to coding the actual desktop app from scratch using HTML, CSS and Javascript as well as two external libraries to introduce extra functionalities. I did not use any pre-written snippets of code, as I wanted to challenge myself and put my learning to the test. Many hours later, I was distributing the finished app to friends abroad, asking them enthusiastically to give it a try. I hope you will too!