Sberbank Virtual School
Books, videos and audios in one app

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Golden App
3 rd place in category «Books, music and video» in 2018
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Tagline Awards 2018
1st place in category «Popular vote» in 2018
Introduction
35,000 professionals from all over the country enhance their skills at Sberbank Corporate University. On the portal «Virtual School», students receive access to all educational content remotely. So, we have developed a mobile application for iOS and Android to provide them the opportunity to study anywhere in the world at any time.

Project task
The Knowledge Base of the Corporate University is a huge archive that stores more than 300 units of educational content: books, video lectures, audio books, articles and webinars recordings. We needed to combine all formats of files in one application.
Solution
We researched the formats of books, videos and audios and realized how to build user interaction with content and where difficulties could arise. Our team tried different ways of displaying the material, tested dozens of technical solutions, selected suitable options and finally had developed the application for both platforms where you can read, listen and watch educational content.

Fragment of the main sections interaction

«There are just readers, there are applications for audio books listening, and there are ones for watching videos. We combined all this in the Virtual School. As a result, we have got the comprehensive knowledge base of Sberbank».
Project Manager, MobileUp
Books of all time and all publishers
Sberbank Corporate University has its own collection of books and collaborates with various business publishers: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, Alpina Publisher, Eksmo. All of them provide books with book covers of various sizes. So, we needed to unify the display of all books, and used the standard format. We used vertical book covers on the left and a short description on the right with no shadows or substrates. Neat and tidy. This format is suitable for previews of video and audio files. As a process issue, we preferred Folio library. It actually looked as the most stable one and did not require any improvements.









Choose interesting knowledge unit
It is easy to study when you have all required information. You can use filters to choose a topic and a type of material in the app. A user may watch all speakers’ lections on the subject of Agile, for example. Selected parameters are concisely displayed in tag format

Adjust useful settings for reading
You can configure reading options in the app. As in any good reader, it is possible to change the font size and color, set the day or night mode and move on to the table of contents to chose a topic there.

Listening to audio books on the run
Part of the materials of the «Virtual School» has audio versions. If you are good at multitasking enough, you can do sports, cook or use social media and listen to audio recordings of your educational materials at the same time.


Offline access to the files
You can save files on your device in advance to listen and read books, when you are on a plane or on a beach in Indonesia and there is no Internet at the moment.
Collection of highly relevant materials
User gets what he or she wants immediately. On the main screen we focused on relevant materials: recently viewed and saved ones. Enlarged book covers and headlines look attractive and stylish.


«iOS 11 just came out when we started to work on the application. It was something new, fresh thing in the visual world of interfaces. We found that there was some similarity between the Virtual School and the App Store. Both of them are data warehouses, and a selection of content with beautiful covers should be here. Being inspired by the Store, we focused on the headlines and enlarged previews».
Art Director, MobileUp
Individualized education program
Sberbank Corporate University offers various unique learning programs for executives, representatives of executive authorities and partner companies. Educational systems vary with goals, subjects, and teachers. A student gets all the information about his studies: duration of study, teacher contacts and even graduating students’ feedbacks in «My Programs» section.

Resume
Sberbank Virtual School is an educational project which has no equal in Russia. With its help, students of the Corporate University can get a remote learning. The project is constantly being refined and has accumulated a large archive of materials since 2012. Thanks to the application, a user can get an access to these materials from any device.
Awards
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Golden App
3rd place in category «Books, music and video» in 2018
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Tagline Awards 2018
1st place in category «Popular vote» in 2018
Project team
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Project manager
Eugene Denisov
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Art Director
Philip Filchenko
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Design
Daria Korzhanova
Ilyas Gayfullin
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System architect
Eugene Valeev
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iOS-development
Dmitry Rosov
Ilya Filinovich
Polina Demidova
Ilya Biltuyev
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Android-development
Vasiliy Chirvon
Vladimir Shedko
Konstantin Kulikov
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Testing
Alexandra Kochetkova
Daria Kurkina
Maria Orlova
Ilya Zelensky
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Manager
Alexandr Khoroshevsky