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News of Alumni: Ryan Bliss ‘13
This year, Ryan Bliss ’13 is graduating from the University of Notre Dame’s ESTEEM graduate program, earning his master’s in Engineering, Science, and Technology Entrepreneurship. As part of the program, students are paired up with companies for a capstone project; Ryan was paired with Fathom, a technolgy firm based in Ireland, to help it bring to market a language learning app.
In October 2019, Ryan spent a week in Dublin at Fathom headquarters working alongside the development team, sitting in on interviews, and drafting a business model for the app. Then in November 2019, Ryan attended the American Counsel on the Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Conference in Washington, DC, with over 8,000 other language educators, school administrators, and linguists. While there, Ryan interviewed Gonzaga Spanish teacher, Barbara Nierman. Through this interview, he set a date to visit Gonzaga and test his prototype with current students.
So on January 10, 2020, Ryan visited Señora Nierman's Honors Spanish classes to conduct a live demo of the app. “During product development, it is important to continually test your prototype or product throughout the design experience,” says Ryan. Until the demo at Gonzaga, only people inside Fathom had used the app, so it was helpful to get nearly 50 students’ thoughts. During the demo, the students were extremely engaged, found bugs in the program, and discussed ways to make it more user-friendly. The last class of the day showed how a chat feature designed for students to ask questions about homework could turn into an instant messaging server.
“What impressed me the most was how much time and thought the students put into the feedback survey I sent them,” said Ryan. “From this demo and their candid feedback, our app has improved tremendously in the past few weeks.”
Thank you, Ryan, for coming back to Gonzaga and congratulations!
Celebrating 200 Years of Jesuit Education in the Nation's Capital
