Michigan State University’s Sociolinguistics Lab in the Department of Linguistics, Language, and Cultures hosts a research project called Michigan Diaries, which records changes to the lives and languages of Michiganders.

During the COVID-19 quarantine, MSU Linguistics needed a way to maintain their research safely. This led to the creation of MI Diaries, a way to remotely record and transcribe audio. As more researchers and programs realized the value in remote data collection, new features were added, including notes, photos, etc. More niche cases arose and the MSU Linguistics program found that the application had unexpected limitations that would require native software solutions to fix.

Our Mobile App for Remote Recording is a flexible solution that enables subjects to easily record sound, add images, and upload data directly to a server for research purposes. Our solution is a redesign of existing software with an emphasis on user experience and customization.

Our solution facilitates all sound-based research with a modular design that enables researchers to easily toggle features on or off. The simple and intuitive user interface makes it easy for anyone to record and upload samples for research. Users can record their audio, select pictures on their device, and upload content to the server with just a few clicks.

Customizing the application for any kind of research is as simple as copying the codebase and changing just a few lines of code.

Our application makes it easy for researchers to gather large amounts of multimedia data without programming knowledge, increasing data collection efficiency and speeding up research.

Our software is built in Kotlin for Android and Swift for iOS. The existing server-side pipeline is used to ensure seamless transition between versions.