From startup prototype to a professional platform

User-friendly platform for young and old

Parlangi connects people, more specifically 'junior' non-native speakers are brought into contact with 'senior' mentors who speak their mother tongue. The junior learns the language in a relaxed atmosphere and the mentor has useful social contact.

Initially, Parlangi approached Coteng as a startup. They wanted to offer seniors a user-friendly platform with video connections. In addition, junior and mentor would be linked via a database based on language and interests. And, users should be able to easily schedule video sessions in an online calendar. The challenge was to achieve this with a very limited budget as is characteristic of start-up companies.

Flexible architecture, to adjust and scale up

In a first step, it was important to try out the concept with real users. We have set up a prototype. In startup projects, it is important to design a flexible architecture. This way you can adjust the product after feedback. As the startup grows, the system must be scalable over different servers.

In this project, we worked with existing libraries in order to keep the development costs limited. For Parlangi it was important they became the owner of the source code and they could actively manage some parts themselves. Currently, a number of pages are managed by Parlangi.

Cost-efficient growth

With the feedback of the prototype, the current version of the user interface was designed and implemented. This version had to ensure that both the older and younger generation could work smoothly with the platform. A number of specific components have been custom-made for this.

Due to the well-thought-out architecture, more features could gradually be added as the experience and budget grew. In this way, the platform could be further expanded for other target groups. Both the VDAB (i.e. a Flemish employment agency) and various municipalities have recently started to use the Parlangi platform for their integration and language programs. For this purpose, we have added a dashboard module in which a coordinator can monitor the progress of the participants.

Because not all seniors have access to a computer and students nowadays prefer to work with mobile phone or tablet, there is also an iOS and Android version of the application available.

For more info about Parlangi: www.parlangi.net

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