Visual Dictionary
British Council Singapore
Issue 37 | December 2015
Agency
Grey Group Singapore
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Ali Shabaz Executive Creative Director Low Jun Jek Creative Director Jorge Thauby Art Directors Sudhir Pasumarty Jorge Thauby Head of Art Tan Giap How Copywriters Julian Gutierrez Karn Singh
Production Team
Producer, Greyworks Jacinta Loo Mobile Developer Balasubramaniyan Suruliraji Head of Technology Ong Su Hui Creative technologist Sandeep Bhardwaji
Other Credits
Account Director Samuel Minns Account Manager Marie Tan Editor, Greyworks Timothy Lee
Date
June 2015
Background
The mission of the British Council in Singapore was to connect people with learning opportunities and creative ideas from the UK. If anyone wanted to learn English, take an exam or study in the UK, they were there to help.
Idea
It was never easy for people to widen their vocabulary in English, which was why the British Council developed an app which would turn people's everyday surroundings into a powerful learning tool.
Mastering a broader vocabulary was as easy and as fun as taking a photo.
All learners had to do was use their mobile phones to snap an object. Through image recognition technology, the Visual Dictionary then displayed the word on their phone along with an audio pronunciation of it.
The Visual Dictionary was able to scan nearly 40 million images in its database before synching with the Cambridge Dictionary to provide the word and definition.
To download the app:
- IOS: http://apple.co/1Fhp1hz
- Android: http://bit.ly/1Hee40y
- Website: http://www. visualdictionaryapp.com/
Results
In two weeks the app was downloaded by 3,000 students, who snapped some 304,000 objects to discover the English word for them. That works out as each student broadening their vocabulary by 250 words, an achievement which would have been far harder in a standard classroom.
Our Thoughts
This is a brilliant re-purposing of an existing visual search technology, originally devised for mobile commerce. As Grey Singapore say on their website, what the British Council did not really need was another ad campaign, they needed a way to be relevant and helpful to the thousands of Singaporeans keen to get on in their lives by learning English.
There were 1.5 million apps available in the Apple Store as of June 2015. Most will have been completely ignored. This, on the other hand, being 'useful, usable and delightful' deserves to be downloaded at least a million times.