SMART PEOPLE — A Case study

THE CLIENT
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.
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Putting aside the language classes, what seems specific to their proposal is the way one can improve his language skills having fun and meeting other people of his rank of age doing some cultural and sportive activities.
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According to the stakeholders, many students are unable to attend the summer camp due to cost and time reasons, but still want to access the curriculum.
THE CHALLENGE
This project is about creating an online learning platform for 12–21-year-old students. It will transform the in-person learning experience into a 100 % digital experience that can be accessed by students at a lower cost.
The goal is then to provide a MVP (Minimum Viable Project) in its mid-fi version that can provide to digital learners an experience as enjoyable and unique as the one lived by the students attending the summer camp.
THE CONTEXT
In the scope of this business and competitive analysis, two main fields were mainly considered: existing digital solution for language skills improvement (Duolingo, Babbel, Busuu, Hellotalk, etc.) and companies that are providing summer camps with, but also without, language classes (Wakanga, Zigo Tours, UCPA, EF, etc.).
What appeared first from the analysis is that the 12–21-year-old rank of age had to be narrowed and that we should develop the solution in its MVP version. We then decided to focus on the 18–21 year-old potential students because: it puts aside the question of parental authorisation in most countries and it seems that there is a huge gap to fill in the « summer vacation proposal » for this rank of age.
Benchmarking the summer camps proposals for the 18–21, we hardly found anything specific (not to say nothing). All propositions were either summer camps based on the same model of summer camps for younger ones or packaged tour (which are, basically, camps for adults, no?) . And I am not between 18 and 21 anymore (and I am not my user), but I can tell that it doesn’t seem really exciting (and frighteningly expensive for a boring moment).
So… Here is a huge gap to fill in.

THE TEAM AND OUR APPROACH
Tools involved: Double diamond process, UX strategy, Kanban planification (using Trello)
Roles in our 100 % feminine team were fairly assigned: as a group of 2, we were both co-leaders of the whole process detailed below. We followed the double diamond one from the « discover » stage to the mid « deliver » one, providing a first iteration of a MVP for a usability test.
After overviewing the tasks to complete within a week, we established our UX strategy and used Trello keep track of our progress within the process.
[DISCOVER] — THE RESEARCH
Tools involved: Business and competitive analysis, interviews (qualitative), survey (quantitative), user flow (as is — competitors), architecture of information (as is — competitors), empathy map, persona
The recruitment of the users has been a big part of the mission and actually the first we tried to settle. Thanks to that dynamic, we had the opportunity to lead interviews with 5 users. However, we had a hard time to find a relevant number of persons to answer our survey. We had only 25 % of the answers expected and it was then not really possible to take these information into account. At least, they were not contradictory with the insights we had got from the interviewees and it helped us a bit to draw a kind of tendency on: 1/ the favorite apps of the 18–21 (which are mainly Instagram and Youtube) 2/ the way they spent their summer time last year (they mainly worked and spent their vacation with their family) 3/ they kind of activity and the way that activity would interest and imply them on the learning of a language.
Incidentally, the interviewees and the surveyed were mainly interested in making progress on the languages they already know. Not that much in learning a new language.

[DEFINE] INSIGHTS
- They want to improve their skills in a language they have already started to learn
- They use their personal cellphone on a 2 to 5 hours daily bases
- They know about language apps and the used to practise with it but they were not really engaged in this digital learning
- They don’t want to take lessons
- They lack oral training
[DEFINE] THE BIG DISCOVERY
Even if they mostly tried apps to learn new languages, they get easily bored and gave up quickly. They need passionate teachers and to know why they are doing it. Their main motivation of improving their skills ? Travels and communication. To put in a nutshell, they wan’t to learn, but the don’t wanna feel that they learn. Learning a language is no longer the final goal but a mean to accomplish another mission.
[DEFINE <> DEVELOP] THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
After downloading data, we defined our persona (Fiona) and our problem statement.
Problem statement: Fiona, the active university student, needs an affordable and engaging way to learn languages because she wants to communicate with ease when she travels.

[DEVELOP] THE SOLUTION
Tools involved: Ideation using Crazy8 and “How might we”, site map (to be), user flow (to be), Low-fi and Mi-fi wireframes (on Sketch), prototyping (with Marvel)
Smart People app. gives you a chance to improve your language skills by focusing on a creative project.
- You choose a mission
- You have 4 weeks to accomplish it
- The app will show you the steps to follow
You will be part of a multi-cultural team of 3 people, and you — Smart People, will have to talk with each other to achieve the mission.
Any of you will have his own mentor to keep track of their progress.
Each mission costs 80 €.
[DEVELOP <> DELIVER] THE USABILITY TESTING
Tools involved: Testing scenario, 1st iteration of prototype
We’ve got many insights from the usability testing which are thematically listed here and which will be, of course, the bases for our second iteration.
Price: Too high, A. would pay max 20 € at once or maybe more but in several times (membership, delayed payment). On the other hand, A. understands the price because of the mentorship. If pros are involved “it worth it”.
Mentorship: It gives her trust in the project: she feels, thanks to him/her that she can really improve her language skills developing a personal and collaborative project.
Technique: She got stuck on Week 1. Need to fix it out.
General understanding of solution: A. understands pretty well the principle of the app and seemed really excited about it. Apart the price that can really be an issue, she would apply
Multi-cultural: She understands that she is part of team but didn’t catch that the others were not french speakers
Features: She understands that she can chat with them
[DEVELOP <> DELIVER] THE NEXT STEPS
Next steps would be the followings:
Second iteration of the mid-fi and second round of Usability testing to fix the little errors and to improve and test more efficiently the communication and notification feature of the MVP (communication with team and mentor) that we didn’t manage to develop that much in the allocated time.
Reinforcement of the business plan to establish with more certainty the status of the mentor and to evaluate the price of a mission at the fairest.
Jump into the UI part, namely to make the inter-cultural aspect be more evident (round flag icon related to the profile pic of each member of the team), so it can be understood at first glance.
