The Religious Sisters of Charity are very grateful to Ronan O’Neill and Mark Nally for their great work in developing version 2 of our app. We hope many people will download it and use it. It is available from both the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. Version 2 of our mobile app now called ‘Walking with Mary Aikenhead’ was released in February 2019. Here’s how we arrived at version 2!
The first version of our mobile app was released in 2015 as part of our bicentenary celebrations. It was called ‘In the Footsteps of Mary Aikenhead’ and was released on 22nd July 2015. In 2017 we began thinking about updating the app and we intended to update and launch version 2 in 2018. A ‘communications consultation’ group was appointed to oversee this work, headed by Dermot O’Connor. Sadly, Dermot died very suddenly in February 2018 so work on the redevelopment of the app stopped. In August 2018 we sent out a request for tenders to redevelop the app. Three proposals were received and the contract was eventually awarded to Odin Creative. Version 2 of the app was released in February 2019 with a new title ‘Walking with Mary Aikenhead’.
Odin Creative are Ronan O’Neill and Mark Nally. Here Ronan shares his experience of working on the redevelopment of the app:
“Version 2 of ‘Walking with Mary Aikenhead’ sees a complete redevelopment of the original app to include an interactive walking trail and a better app experience.
With this redevelopment came two new developers Mark Nally and myself. We are both sons-in-laws of the late Dermot O’Connor who helped create both the old and new version of the app.
Having had many discussions with Dermot on what version 2 could look like, he had shown us his sketches and ideas of how version 1 could be improved upon. Unfortunately before work began, Dermot died suddenly.
It was a huge shock to the family and to this day he is missed sorely as a friend, role model and father-in-law. Mark and I decided to take on the app development and see that version 2 was something that Dermot would be proud of.
We hope you like the latest release. We feel Dermot would have enjoyed this new version too and that we upheld the high standards of work he set for himself.”
