Smart people Inc.: the UX behind learning from an app.
-English translation-
I would like an application to be fun and feel the community effect. -18 year old, female.
Data Downloading: Affinity Diagram
To make sense of all the data we’ve collected we decided to use a tool called affinity diagram. An affinity diagram is a method used to sort and organize research findings so that we can physically see trends and relationships in data.
The Persona, Jennifer.
We created a user persona of a potential app user. This persona is based on the research findings that we have collected. Jennifer, our enthusiastic high school graduate. She’s energetic, social and loves learning new things.
Define
In this stage, we start extracting the data from all the user insights and framing them specifically. Here, we identify the problems that are worth pursuing and not.
User Journey
Now that you met Jennifer, it’s time to learn about her journey and find our pain points. Below is Jennifer’s user journey map. A user journey map is a mapping tool that helps designers visualize and gain an understanding of our users’ goals and frustrations.
At the end of the define stage, we then draft our problem statement. I have to admit that this has been the most challenging for us. A lot of the previous problem statement we have written were either too broad, too vague or tackling too many problems at the same time. Coming up with a solid and foolproof problem statement was a relief for us because it gives us clear direction.
The Problem Statement
Jennifer, the enthusiastic high school graduate, needs to learn another language while socializing because she wants to be bilingual but she’s struggling to stay motivated learning by herself, she feels lonely and bored.
How might we help her stay motivated and entertained while learning?
Develop
Now, the fun part. Idea generation or ideation is something that I do look forward to. In this stage, we generate as many ideas as we can then we group and refine these ideas by multi voting to concentrate on the best possible ideas.
Crazy 8's
Crazy 8 is an ideation exercise where we come up 6–8 ideas in 8 minutes. The first time I’ve tried crazy 8, there was a moment where I felt I cannot come up with that many ideas. But something will always pop up in your head when the timer goes off. So, I’m a full believer in trusting the process! After we finished ideating we then post them on a wall, we review and later discuss. We also used dot voting to choose the best ideas.
Wire-flow
We quickly did a wire-flow. It’s a mix of low fidelity prototype and a path that connects them.
Just when you feel like you’re on a roll and the next best solution is almost within your grasp. We got Design feedback from the client, and it is an integral part of any successful design project. It allows the clients to review and critique a design solution that we presented. The first lesson that I’ve learned in being a UX designer is to never get overly attached to your previous ideas.
Now back to the drawing board! After going back to our problem statement and our crazy 8 ideas. We realized that we have the solution all along but we just didn’t dive into it. And that for me was the beauty of this whole process. We have the answers, we just needed to look deeper.
Prototyping
Sit tight, we’re almost there! After doing a low fidelity wireframe, we hopped into sketch to create mock-ups of our proposed solutions.
Pain point 1: Learning a language the traditional way can get boring.
Design solution: Make a language learning app that feels like a game while keeping it social so they can practice with each other. Our application connects our users with other users of the same interests. Upon sign up the students has the option to choose which language he/she wants to learn.
Low fidelity
Mid-Fidelity
The wheel randomly picks its mission and the users are then randomly teamed with other users. Once the mission has been accepted the team has now 24 hours to finish the task.
Mini-missions, the purpose of the mini-missions is to have the users learn through experience and create memorable adventures. To emulate that same feeling of teamwork and camaraderie in summer camps.
Paint point 2: Users find it difficult to stay motivated and engaged in an online learning app.
Design Solution: Have the users to upload videos of their missions and sharing it with their friends. One of our users’ pain points was getting distracted by social media while studying. We believed that having them share their experience will give them a sense of accountability to improve and help them advance.
Ratings, having the users input what they learned from their mission and have them track their progress. Based on our research findings, users prefer to keep track of their performances. It helps them stay motivated in reaching their goals hence keeping them learning.
Deliver
This is the stage when we will do our usability testing with our target users. This stage is all about getting feedback on our concept prototype. With our users’ insights in mind, we then iterate and improve our prototype until it’s time for handoff.
Usability testing
For this project, we did remote usability testing and have sent them to 3 target users. From our interview, we did gain a lot of insights and immediately iterated on our design solution.
User insights
- When teamed up with other users, they would like to able to click on the photo of their team and see their profile.
- There were no clear instructions in the beginning that they can take videos and upload their missions.
- They would like to have the ability to contact their past team members.
- They liked that they can rate themselves.
- Having the contact details of the mission partners/sponsors available on the app.
Takeaways
I am very happy with our design solution but a good designer knows that a good project is never finished. There is so much to be done and more testing to follow. I believe that we can later achieve our mission, in making language learning on your phone engaging, accessible and turn it into an exciting experience for everyone.
*Part 2 UI case study to follow.*
Thank for your reading and leave some love/claps.
