Meet My Dad, in an App

Creating a digital version of people we love, without code and for free on Thunkable

Dad, available on the Google Play Store and soon in the Apple App Store

Click to remix a digital version of someone you love on Thunkable

Meet my dad. He is 72 years young and still plays tennis every week. He is a grandfather of 4 (and counting), a two-time immigrant (to Hong Kong and then to Hawai’i), an entrepreneur, a bird-lover, a high-rise gardener, a long-time Lion’s Club member and a cancer survivor.

My dad lives in Hawai’i — but thanks to the power of modern technology, you can meet him, in an app.

You can ask him “when were you born?”, “what is the meaning of your name?” or “what is your favorite song?”. He will respond in his own voice, almost as if he is there with you. (In fact, you’ll get a more honest response than if he was actually there with you).

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear

Two years ago, armed with an MXL 990 condensor microphone and a set of questions inspired by the folks from Story Corps, I conducted my first interview of my father in my childhood apartment in Waikiki.

In our family, we didn’t really discuss a lot about our history as a family. It may seem strange but I did not know my dad’s real birthday (Because of the way lunar birthdays work, I still don’t know his birthday).

I didn’t know what his name was in his own language of Wenzhounese, and certainly not what it meant or who gave it to him.

I didn’t know the large parts of my dad’s story that ultimately lay the foundation for my own story. I didn’t know why he left China, why he went to Hong Kong, why he finally settled in Hawai’i. I vaguely remembered the furniture store that my parents watched every day, which became the backdrop for much of my childhood.

The voice is the container for the soul

Thankfully, despite this being an admittedly strange exercise between a Chinese father and son, my dad answered all my questions.

For the first time, I learned more about his mom, my grandmother, a kind woman who had once worked in a textile factory. I learned about his dad, who was orphaned at a young age and by necessity, became a furniture apprentice in Shanghai.

I learned about many of the hardships that my dad never fully explained growing up — about why the business that he started — Dragonwood — never made it, about feeling like a refugee in Hong Kong, about the time he was beaten with a tennis racket in his apartment in Hawai’i.

I learned that one of the things that brings him the most joy is his voice. I learned that he measures the quality of his own singing not by accuracy but by stamina, especially in the ability to belt out the lengthy Chinese classic, “Yellow River”

After an hour and fifteen minutes of recording, I put many of the pieces of my dad’s story — of my own story — together for the first time.

I was ready to share it with the world (or at least with my siblings) but two years later, it remained buried in the deep recess of my Google Drive folder.

Organizing our digital selves with the help of AI

Dialogflow is free to use for your first project

Enter Dialogflow, a voice interface that powers many of the assistants that may be a part of your lives today from Alexa to the Google Assistant. Thanks to this technology, our devices can understand our voice and can be programmed to respond depending on what a user asks.

To create a digital version of my dad, I programmed some questions that I wanted to be able to ask him, also known as an intent on the Dialogflow interface.

For each intent, you program an action name. For example, for the intent, “Can you sing Yellow River?”, my action name was "yellowriver"

One of the more remarkable breakthroughs in the past few years is natural language processing, or the ability for our machines to learn what we are asking without having to say the exact right words.

I then spliced my 75 minute conversation recording into audio bite size snippets using Garageband (you can use any service that splits up an audio track into smaller pieces). This actually took the bulk of my app development time since I wanted to find the most interesting parts of our conversation to include.

I named each audio file to match with the action name that I programmed in Dialogflow. For example, “Why did you leave China?” (intent), "leavechina" (actionname) matched with "leavechina.mp3" (audio file name). This will make programming the app easier.

Remix an app without code on Thunkable

Thunkable is the platform where anyone can remix an app on Android or iOS without code. Users start from an existing app and drag and drop different designs and services into their app to make it their own.

Step ① / Copy the sample app into your account

Just click on this link. If you are not logged in already, you will be asked to log in with your Google account.

Step ② / Live test the sample app to see a preview it on your phone

One of the coolest features of the Thunkable platform is the ability to see your app on your phone as you tweak it, also known as live testing. You can live test any app on Thunkable with our iOS or Android app.

Step ③ / Remix

a) You can replace the photo of my dad with someone you love. You can also change the intro / first screen in the same way. I like to design my screens in Google Slides and set the size to a custom 1080 px x 1920 px.

b) You can replace the sample audio files with audio files of your own.

c) Since I only had a fixed set of questions and responses, I added a list of suggested questions to the app interface, which I programmed to pick randomly. You can edit these questions to match the ones you programmed in Dialogflow.

d) You can change the app name and icon

e) You can change the project name

Step ④ / Share, Download or Publish

Once you’ve created the digital version of your loved one that you are happy with, share it with your friends and family. Sharing your app project is easy — just click on the share button and it will generate a link for you to share.

Downloading the app on Android or iOS requires a simple click and a few installation steps (since Google and Apple usually want people to download apps from their stores).

You can also publish your app to the App Store (requires a $99/year Apple Developer Program membership) for wider distribution. Publishing to the Play Store will be available soon.

This digital version of my Dad was the most meaningful app I’ve ever made. Strangely, although I know he is but a phone call or a six hour flight away, I feel like he is always with me now (in my pocket no less) wherever I go.
I’m really excited to see you make a version for someone you love, so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out at albert@thunkable.com