The last couple of months have been a life changing experience. I moved from Belgium to Honduras back in October 2013. I know… I know… I am crazy, or at least that’s what the majority of people say when I tell them my story. But let me tell you something before you already start judging me… I am happy. Yes, happy. I am 10x as happy than I was back in gloomy, cold, Belgium.
But I can dedicate another blog post to tell you about my life. For now, I want to talk about an app I have been developing. It is called “Summarizer App”. It does exactly what you are already thinking: It summarizes.
The Idea
I got the idea from an open source python script which did the same thing, summarize articles. I thought, why not make an app out of this? So I started studying the script inside and out. Luckily I knew python. It is in fact the first language I used to program so reading the script was made a little bit easier by that fact.
But I couldn’t use the script because I wanted to make an android app. I needed something in Java. So I searched for an alternative summarizer in Java and found nothing. Determined to still make this app I did the only thing that was left: Translate the python script to Java.
Translating from python to Java took around 1 week, about 6 hours each day. I kind of feel this was a great choice, because I got to know Java more that way. Sometimes I even had to reverse engineer parts of the script. I wouldn’t know how to exactly translate a function so I would replicate what its output was, instead of translating the body of the function.
After having the summarizing engine translated it was just a matter of creating the layout for the app.
The Layout
Home Layout
I have tried to make the overall layout as friendly as I could think of. The Home layout contains two tabs: URL and Text tab. The URL tab parses URL input while the text tab parses pasted text. So you can get a summary by entering in the URL of the article or by copying and pasting text.
I have implemented a share action to the app so it can be started from another app. What this effectively means is that when a user is reading an article on his web browser he can share it to the summarizer app and the app will open up with the URL field already filled in. After that, you just need to specify how many sentences (summary length) you want the summary to have and press the send button to get the summary.
Result Layout
The above screenshot shows an example of an obtained summary. The first thing you see in the action bar is the ability to share the summary, great! Tapping on the app’s icon takes you back up to the home activity.
What follows is the title. Below the title you see the sentences that make out the summary. They come with a great feature which differentiates this app from the others I found at the Play Store and which I personally think adds the biggest value: The ability to customize the summary. More about this on the next section.
History Layout
Users can look at their history by tapping on the “search” icon on the home screen. Tapping on an element in the history screen leads you to the home page with the link or text already filled out, meaning you can recreate the summary seamlessly.
Adding value and differentiating from the rest
After building the prototype I started thinking of extra values that I could add to the app, apart from providing an automatic summary. For this I had to research what was already out there and see what they were doing, and how I could increment on that.
Sharing to the app
One thing that I found that adds value to the user is being able to share to the app. This means that when you are reading an article on your browser, you can share the article into the app. The app’s home screen will appear and the URL field will be already filled in. Leaving the user with only the summary length to choose.
Sharing from the app
This is very much a must. Once you have the summary, you can share to all your favorite social media/messaging apps. The shared summary will have a link to the full article as well (if it came from a url).
Customizing the summary
This is what really differentiates this app from the rest. Once you have the summary, you can actually swipe out (delete) sentences that you think are not helping the summary. One of the flaws of automatic summary scripts is that the summary they generate is actually nothing like a summary: some sentences are completely out of context, some are not even part of the article, etc… By swiping out these sentences, they are deleted and another one is added to the bottom of the summary. You can keep swiping until every sentence in the summary actually belongs there.
Search Past Summaries
This is another differentiator. I implemented a database which stores the links or text you have used to create summaries. You can view them, and the date they were accessed, by tapping on the search icon found in the home screen’s action bar. Pressing an item leads you to the home screen with the respective URL or text filled in instantly, so you can recreate the summary.
Closing
I believe this app gives great value to a niche group of smartphone article readers . They can get a quick summary of what the article is about and decide to read it later on or not. Whenever they want to share an article to friends, they can quickly send it into the summarizer app first, and later share the resulting summary that comes along with the original article’s link.
It would be great if you try out the app and tell me what you think!
Link to App: Click Here
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