Success Story

Developing Te Aka Māori Dictionary app for the next generation

As a cornerstone of the renowned Te Whanake learning series, Te Aka Māori Dictionary app is a vital digital resource for te reo Māori. When the app needed a significant upgrade, Te Murumāra Foundation partnered with Dynamo6 to redevelop, re-platform, and provide ongoing support, ensuring open and speedy access for a new generation of learners.

Services

  • Application Development
  • Managed Services
  • Digital Consultancy

Deliverables

  • Application Hosting & Management
  • App Development & Modernisation
  • Digital Advisory
  • Google Cloud Platform Engineering

Daily searches

App store ranking week of launch

Audio clips for pronunciation

First launched in 2010, Te Aka Māori Dictionary app had become a cornerstone of te reo Māori learning in Aotearoa. Its API powers translations for other critical services like Kupu app, Māori Television, and even Google Translate. However, the app's aging codebase was slow, lacked feature parity between iOS and Android, and struggled to handle traffic spikes during events like Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week).

Te Murumāra Foundation needed a partner to not only rebuild the app for a modern audience but also to re-platform the entire ecosystem onto a scalable and robust cloud infrastructure.

Our approach

  • 01

    Strategic Redevelopment

    The first decision was whether to update the old apps or rebuild them. Understanding Te Murumāra Foundation’s goal for a simple-to-maintain application, our recommendation was to rebuild the app in React Native. This provided a single codebase for both iOS and Android, significantly reducing future development time and ensuring a consistent user experience across all devices.

  • 02

    Collaborative Design & Build

    Working closely with the Foundation’s chosen designer, our development team brought the new user interface to life. This included incorporating images of important people, ancestors, and native flora and fauna to enrich the dictionary entries. The build was not without its technical challenges; we developed a custom media player UI to ensure the 24,000+ audio recordings would play harmoniously across both platforms and engineered a solution for the animated bird logo to display seamlessly on different device screen sizes.

  • 03

    Re-platforming for Performance and Scale

    A critical part of the project was re-hosting the app, website, and the crucial dictionary API. We migrated the entire platform to Google Cloud Platform. To ensure the fast search performance required by the app and its many API consumers, the dictionary database was built on Google BigQuery, providing a powerful and scalable foundation. We also implemented Google Data Studio to provide the Foundation with detailed usage analytics, helping to inform which new features to prioritise based on user behaviour.

  • 04

    Ongoing Evolution Driven by User Feedback

    The launch was the beginning of an ongoing partnership. Through a Managed Support arrangement, we provide regular updates to keep the app compliant with the latest iOS and Android requirements. Crucially, we work with the Foundation to develop new features based directly on user feedback from the app stores. This has led to valuable additions like the ability to organise favourites into folders, the ability for users to filter search results by idioms, phrases, and proverbs, and an interactive flashcard-style quiz feature to aid learning.

The results

Te Aka Māori Dictionary app is faster, more feature-rich, and built on a foundation that can continue to support learners on their te reo Māori journey.

  • A Modern, Cross-Platform Experience: Rebuilt in React Native, the app now offers a slick, unified experience for both iOS and Android users from a single, easy-to-manage codebase.

  • Enhanced Performance and Scalability: Migrating to Google Cloud Platform and using BigQuery for the database has made the app significantly faster and ensures it can handle huge traffic spikes, such as the 170,000+ average daily searches.

  • Massive User Adoption: The new app has been a huge success. Within a week of launching, it was trending as the #2 paid-for app in New Zealand and has since been installed on over 25,000 devices. The top five searched words—ngā mihi, whānau, Māori, Mōrena, and motu—show the depth of its integration into daily use.

  • A Platform for Continuous Improvement: The new architecture and ongoing support partnership allow for the rapid development of user-requested features, such as shareable word lists and interactive quizzes, ensuring the app continues to evolve with its community.

  • Working with Dynamo6 has been a good experience. Overall it was a seamless project, working within our timelines and budgets. There were no surprises in the project and the communication was very good. We were clear about what was going to happen, we were provided with a project outline and milestones and there were regular updates to know how things were progressing.

    The Dynamo6 team made sure we considered the options and possibilities available to us and suggested what would work based on our goals. We have a great structure to build onto in future for the app and robust hosting of the website and API by using Google Cloud. It’ll allow us to scale efficiently during peak periods, such as Māori Language Week.

    Peter Moorfield

    Te Murumāra Foundation

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