The Story of this App (the short version)

I’m Daisy, I’m an ADI (Approved Driving Instructor) in the UK. Before I started developing this app, I mainly used a whiteboard or paper with toy cars for demonstrations, or just used Google Maps (which generally involves somewhat unclear pointing). I was aware of other apps for this purpose but (as far as I know) there aren’t any available for Android that can do what I needed.

My vision for this app started from demonstrating parking. I tend to use the toy cars for this, but it isn’t always clear to the learner how the car moves as it steers - the toy car goes wherever you push it, regardless of whether that would be possible with a real car! I wanted something that could clearly demonstrate the way a car moves, and thus was born RoadDemo.

Imagine this, but with only the car, the speed slider, and the steering wheel - roughly what RoadDemo looked like when I’d done what I first set out to do.

Well, it wasn’t quite that simple - I made the car and the steering wheel controls, which was all I really needed. I figured if I wanted to share this with the world (or at least, the fairly small world of UK driving instructors), I would have to develop it into something a bit more complete. So, several hundred hours of work later, here it is (and I’m really hoping at least a few people like it).

Pricing strategy

I really want this app to be available to people who it could benefit, so from the start I intended to use the “pay what you think it’s worth” model. Unfortunately, I cannot do that within the terms of the Google Play store, so unfortunately that version has to have a set price (well, it could be free, but I do hope to make at least some money back from this). I think this still works well, because everyone can try out the web version, and then either buy the Play store version, or continue with the web version and pay whatever they feel appropriate.