Smart people, let’s learn a new language with fun !

Audrey Alcover
Nov 1 · 11 min read

Smart People Inc. is an educational company born in 2014. They currently offer in-person language courses — English, Spanish, Italian, French, German and many more — for kids and teenagers from 12 to 21 years old.

Their main attraction is a summer camp. Hundreds of teenagers join every year in different locations, as they have a very special recipe: they integrate sports, outdoor activities, technology, humor, games, and other cool stuff to their mission of teaching a second language

They’re finding many students are unable to attend the summer camp due to cost and reasons, but still want to access the curriculum.

Our mission is to think about a totaly new online experience for student that cannot attend the summer camp and try to give them the best way to learn and have fun at the same time.

We had to creat an online learning platform for 12/21 years old students and transform the in-person learning experience into a 100% digital experience that can be accessed by students at a lower cost.

To start this amazing project we first have to collect important data to be inside the head of a teenager and ask them some questions to know better what they needs, what they expect, why kids use an online learning platform, and what is fun and be compatible with learning for them.

For this project, I worked with my coworker on the actual market research.

So Suzanne and I start to work on a UX/UI design project, our team organization was pretty great ! We share a lot of ideas and made a lot of brainstorming.

Befor to start any research we realize that find people under 21 y/o would be difficult but were completly mandatory to understand what our users needs and to developpe our project we needed to know How? When? Wheer and Why? they learn new languages.

For that we jump inside them heads with a lot of questions !

a. What about e-learning ?

First just for the info, e-learning exist since 1999 and used for the first time at a seminar on e-learning systems. Other words have also begun to emerge in search of a precise description such as “e-learning” and also “virtual learning”.

In the early 1990s, several schools were created to offer online courses only, taking adventage of the internet and bringing education to people who would never have been able to attend a university because of temporal and geographical situation.

Technological advences have also helped educational institutions reduce the costs of distance education, an economy that would also be passed on to students.

In the 2000s, companies started using e-learning to train their employees. New and experienced workers now have the opportunity to improve their industry knowledge base and expand their skills. At home, people had access to programs that allowed them to earn degrees online.

b. Who are the users ?

Our future users will be the generation between 16 and 18 y/O so it mean that is concerns young people born between 2000 and 2008, Z génération : Also called digital natives, these young adults are born by hand and are constantly surrounded by new technologies. Unlike Generation X, without access to technology, Millenials can quickly become lost …

To begin, let’s define the typical profile of this generation Z that is already shaking companies. The Z’s were born after 1995, they are under 25 years old and are at the doors of the company, they are the little brothers and sisters of the generation Y and the children of the generation X.

The Z are very curious, lucid and informed without being disillusioned. They grew up with the Internet and are therefore ultra-connected, demanding, eternal students and budding entrepreneurs.

c. What about the competitors ?

Befor to think about any idea of developpement we found some competitors between e-learning app and summer camp like :

DIRECT COMPETITORS

  • Duolingo
  • Memrise
  • Babbel
  • Speekoo
  • Busuu
  • Tandem
  • Mosa Lingua
  • Rosetta Stone
  • CLC (Language Stay)
  • EF (Language Stay)
  • Nacel. (Language Stay)
  • Frilingue (Language Stay)
  • Djuringa juniors (Language Stay)
  • Chateaux des langues (Language Stay)

INDIRECT COMPETITORS

  • Qioz/Paris (Web site e-learning)
  • Lingoda (online course)
  • Kokoroe (formatio group)

All of this competitors are doing or a digital lesson or summer camp to give fun and new skills knowledge but no one are mixing both, so let’s challenge our brain and giving birth to a new concepte.

II. Actual Market resarch Qualitative

a. Survey

We start our research with a survey (75 answers), for this we creat a survey on google form with this next questions:

  1. How old are you ?

We got 88% between 15 and 21 y/o

2. Are you learning a new language ?

We got 86,5% yes

3.Have you already been to a summer camp ?

We got 77% No

Then we ask open questions to now why and we read some answer like they are lazy, not intresting about and also too expensive.

We also wanted to know which social network they are using the most and the two more popular for teenagers are insatgram with 94,6% and snapchat with 93,2%, that analyse were really intresting for us to understand what they find in this kind of app.

At the question are you using app to learn a new language we got 68,9% No and if yes what was it ? In first is Duolingo at 35% and Babbel 20%. to go deeper in the question we ask them at which frequency they are using it and we got 67,6% “I use it only when I have time like to wait the bus”.

We asked if they prefert to learn with a teacher or with an app and we got 85,7% with a teacher because, about 45 answer, they are more talkative with a human teacher in front hem.

When we collected the data of this survey we started to know a bit more about them motivations and goals to learn a new language and also why it’s still difficulte for teenagers to find a real intrest to use learning app or to go in a summer camp but wasn’t enough to make conclusions.

b.Interviews (JOB TO BE DONE)

To prepare a good interview, we write an interview guide with some questions even we wanted that they talk more than us and we took material like a note book, pen and phone to record.

We went out from the building and we went to one of the busy place of Paris, Chatelet (famous to find teenagers).

We manage the time of the interview and try to let them talk more as possible like every time bounce on them answer to a other one.

About this 5 interviews we learnt a lot, they give to us really precious ideas and we realize how they felt concerne and they are still really motivated to learn a new language !

To sum up the Job to Be Done:

Armed with our phone (to record) we stop groups of teen’s and introduce ourself by our name and what we are doing. About this first group we start to thhink already, they told us that hey had some bad expericences with learning app about the motivation like “I Didn’t use it anymore after two weeks”WHY? “Because I don’t progress” ; “Is not funny”; “I prefert to talk to someone than my phone”.

Then we find some nice people in group or alone and they were really frustrated about “travel is expensive”; “buy a app to say hello is also to expensive”, they let us know that they want more (good to know ! teenagers are still extremely motivated) they need to be stimulate with something that they like to use.

About this interview we realize that we complete our research with the digital part (survey) and human part (interviews) combinated is the perfect way to start to IDEAT.

III. Ideation, tools and brainstorming

a. Persona

The sentence that we decide to write from one of our interviewees was a real sentence that she said about the question: for you, what can be the ideal app to learn ? “ I’d like to go beyond a school environment, meet people to talk in a foreign language just like a social network”

The persona help us to target exactly our user and remeber every times where we should go and how.

b. Affinity Diagram

To be organize in our ideas we decide to use tools and first make a How Might We on a Sticky note.

After a dote votting we found this three ideas to develop:

. Be in Imertion

. Creat opportunity for people to meet

. App for only student

c. Journey Map

We create the journey Map of Justine to focus on her pain point during she is using the learning app :

To understand better her journey Map, we can see that after use the app from the first time she feel already boring about to come back on the app because her final frustration is that she don’t progress because she have no one to practice with.

d.problem statement

Justine, the connected high-schooler, needs an English learning application that would permit her to meet foreigners in order to make real progress in English.

About the problem statement we decide to organize a ideation of a lot of ieas and choose some with dote votting:

This Ideas comes from a big part of our research, we understand that teenagers were use a lot snapchat and they like to be challenged !

e. Moscow

Then, to refine our certainty about the future of this app we used the Moscow Method which is:

M: Must have/ S: Should have/ C: Could have/ W: Won’t have

This Methode was excellent but at the end we find that maybe we where to far from our first idea (at the begging) so we took the decision to IDEAT again …

This one was the good one !

We keep our best ideas that we had and completly change the rules, we mooved all the lessons and exercices ideas and decide to take only the “fun” part but in a learning way.

Let’s see about what we were thinking.

IV. Wireframe and Prototyping

First befor to show you our concept let me introduce our coach’s app : Firo

We design him with simple colors and shape for the mid-fi wireframes

We imagine the app with our ideation and together we were agree to develop the concept of meet foreign people around you (around same age) with your coach, Firo, to play a challenge and go to chat ! For that we want to take the avatar Bit-moji from snapchat and creat a similar world that teenergers know pretty well !

We also research on the Pokemon Go case study to have some data about the teenagers behavior with digital reality and we realize that this app was succeful because they played about kids nostalgia and the challenge.

So we inspire our story about all this informations.

To see better the situation we design all our screens on Sketch and Figma

We choose Firo’s color blue about what it’s mean (dream, wisdom, trust and serenity) and a flamme shape for vivacity.

Let’s understand better how it’ll work ! => Wireflow

With a previous wireflow of our prototype we realize some error of screens that we change to be in the perfect step screens.

Happy from our Wireflow, we create then the final prototype on Invision, that is easy to use and you have some differents possibility to swipp your screen …

But this prototype have to be testing befor to be punish, so we came back to Chatelet in Paris, with our phone only and try to chat with teenagers and explain them our mission.

We test our prototype on 7 testers

We recorder the screens and a other phone was recording the hands way to tap screens.

To each testers we explain them a Sceario that is this one: “You call Justine, you’re 16 y/o and you just download this app to learn english so you don’t have any account, you misson on the app at the end is to meet Marry a English girl that she want to speak French, let’s do a challenge”

During the test we observed how they were runing on the app, the small frustration to follow a scenario because they can’t click everywhere and most of the time they didn’t read anything in english on the screen because they don’t know at all what does it mean.

At the end of the test we ask them all the same question :

  • How did you find the navigation?
  • There is some moments that you hesitate ? why ?
  • Did you feel any frustrations ?
  • If they app existed you would download it ?

We talk abit with them, thanks them and leaved.

When we came back with our 7 screens record and hands/fingers way videos, we collect the data and start to think about the features to ameliorate for the futur.

But first let’s discover a short video of our prototype:

And if you want to try it, you can click on this link :)

https://invis.io/G8UMM2Z9KCV

To sum up :

For the feedback that we had

Really fluid to use and they like our logo (Firo), they told us that they even don’t need to understand what was write on the screen to know which step they have to go next, so it mean for us that we did a good user flow.

They were enthusiast to win the challenge withe our idea to offer them a mac donald goods like Mc Fleury or the possibility to change the cloths of them avatar if they do a challenge, they give us precisous informations like one of our tester were playing at Fortuite and he said that he is completly adict to win accessories and stuff for his avatar in the game.

Some parents from the tester tell us that they also want to try if it was a real app.

We still have a questionement about the meeting peoples that they don’t know, some of them ask us about security.

For the first idea we recommand them to meet the first time in a public area like in a coffe shop, restaurent or commercial center.

we want to provide them the possibility to give note with stars and some comment to recommande people but we gonna still work on it.

About this project we learnt a lot about collect data and think like a teenagers. Meet teenagers in the street were really helpfull for us to understand better them expectations learn goals and them motivations.

I really enjoy to do to this research, peoples that we meet were really involed in our study and they wanted to know if we really develope this app ! Even them parents that we meet were intresting and encourage us to do it .

Audrey Alcover

Written by

Traveler (backpacker) and philosopher in the soul, I am an adventurer. But before any student in UX / UI designer ready to learn and develop new concepts.

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