[In Press] Warrma Mangarrayi : co-designing an app for learning Mangarrayi, an Indigenous language of Northern Australia

An increasing focus of recent research is on the role of technology in support of teaching, learning and renewal or revitalization of endangered languages. The potential roles of a given piece of technology logically depend, at least to some extent, on the features built into the technology at design stage. Since most language revitalization and renewal efforts are local, community-based initiatives, the preferences and insights of community members are critical to build into the design, to maximize the relevance and appeal of the technology to those who might use it to maintain and increase knowledge and skills in their language. Recognizing this, the project reported on here incorporated co-design into the development of a mobile app, Warrma Mangarrayi (“Listen to Mangarrayi”). The app design also drew on a model of language revitalization, which offers a conceptualization of how technology can be a resource for a language revitalization team whose goals include everyday phrase-based communication in the endangered language. In this article we discuss the iterative user-centered co-design process adopted for the research and the improvements resulting from community user feedback on different versions and how the resulting resource, Warrma Mangarrayi, responded to community needs and aspirations.