Grammarly — a UX Case study
Grammarly is great to improve your grammar. Let's improve their product.
Introduction
Grammarly is one of the most popular and widely used software tools for grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism checking. With Grammarly, your writing becomes flawless and simplified by avoiding small mistakes like including a hyphen, comma, capital letter, etc. Additionally, it also includes an AI-powered writing assistant that helps you to write clearly without any errors and make use of concise words at the right time.
Understanding the challenge
The Grammarly app not only corrects the mistakes and grammar but also gives our writing a professional and cohesive tone. But the free version of the app is minimal and has only one thing to do with your writing, i.e. to correct spelling and grammar in your writing. For those who completely rely on the Grammarly app for their writing would not help in all the scenarios.
And there are also some of the Grammarly Alternatives For Error-Free Writing. Still, those don’t have plagiarism detecting option; it has limited device support, Lack of grammar capability, and also not a great option for professionals who need advanced features.
List: https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/grammarly-alternatives/
https://www.guru99.com/free-grammarly-alternative.html
https://www.hostingsprout.com/grammarly-alternatives/
https://shanebarker.com/blog/grammarly-alternatives/
However…
These apps have all the basic features such as basic grammar correction or eliminating embarrassing errors and world explorers. Still, these aren’t enough for someone who doesn’t want to embarrass themselves in front of others with bad writing skills. We want such customized app features that can solve the proofreading problem can suggest valid answers to the questions asked in the app can support contextual thesaurus, and also has pronounced selection for words or sentences.
Research
Since Grammarly was launched, many competitors have followed up the trend with a similar business model, becoming popular and enhancing the features. To begin my research, I started to look at a few competitors or similar platforms, analyzing UI, UX, User flow, IA, and key features. ProWritingAid, Linguix Grammar Checker, Textio, and Unicheck are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Grammarly Business.
Scenarios-
During the research, I identified many different scenarios where user go for the Grammarly app-
Scenario 1: When the user is writing an email.
Scenario 2: When the user writes a blog or an article.
Scenario 3: When he chats with someone or for uploading decent posts on social media.
Grammarly works as a morale booster for a user.
User Persona
Going further through the research, I have selected young people as users, and I surveyed a few people who have different needs and different goals.
The questions focused on the usage of the app like-
- Do you use the Grammarly or any such similar app.
- How often do you use such an app.
- What are the pros and cons of the Grammarly app or similar kind of app.
- What would you like to add as a feature in such apps which will make your life easier.
Personas:
Empathy Mapping
After my interview, I mapped the response and thought of the user to understand their requirements and pain points.
Pain points
1 What could be done with the person with dyslexia how Grammarly can make their life easier?
What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia — a lifelong condition that affects reading, writing, spelling, and speaking — may be a common condition, but it’s still not widely understood.
“With dyslexia, we don’t have a knowledge gap; we have an action gap.”
– Dr. Sally Shaywitz
This is what reading is like if you have dyslexia.
2
How can Grammarly be used as a learning app?
What’s the solution?
Starting from the pain point, I tried to find solutions and introduce new features overall to improve the user experience. The solution takes one app feature into account.
Adding a ‘Text To Speech’ feature in a Grammarly keyboard and for desktop Grammarly app that allows people with dyslexia, low vision, concussions, and other reading difficulties to have any text read out to them using a computer-generated text to speech voice.
Wireframing
Final Design
After the brainstorming section with empathy mapping and wireframing, I have come up with one method.
The text to speech action has added in the Grammarly keyboard that is accessible for the user while entering the text.
Micro-Interaction
I had explored how the trigger will be implemented in the app for the ‘text to speech’ feature while writing, selecting the text, and how the word pronounces will be triggered.
Conclusion
What did I learn?
After the research and interviews with the users, I have come up with this feature. Writing is all about sharing a message, and no one wants to paint oneself with grammar trolls. Designing this feature has been a challenging journey. This new feature will help not only dyslexic people but also to the ones who don’t want to be a victim of bad grammar.
What are the next moves?
- To add the feature in the Desktop version.
- Usability test of the prototype with users
- Work on accessibility
Thank you for reading! I hope you have enjoyed this case study. If you have any feedback, I’d like to hear from you.
