Ironhack Week 3| Smart People: designing an app to learn an indigenous language in the 21st century

The third week of my Ironhack UX/UI bootcamp in Mexico City was focused on project management, user needs and communicating the design process. It was our first individual project, which meant we had to optimise our time well, especially as we were tasked with a little more homework each week (as we were exposed to different parts of the UX process.) Another 5-day sprint, another problem to solve. I found the Kanban style offered by Trello helped in keeping track of how far ahead I was for different aspects of my project as I could separate each task into “to do,” “doing” and “done.”

What is the state of indigenous languages in Mexico?

Mexico is rich in culture and has many layers of history. Part of its indigenous history is taught in schools but as we hear about many indigenous experiences (Australia included) discrimination and misinformation is still very much alive. I was tasked with designing an app to learn Nahuatl (historically known as Aztec) and in doing so, justifying why someone would want to use my app (and the reason couldn’t be “for fun” or “because it interests me.”

My survey findings show there is a perception that it’s important to preserve indigenous culture in Mexico, but a lack of interest to learn indigenous languages.

I began my investigation by reading, reading and reading more about indigenous language learning both in Mexico and around the world. Nahuatl is spoken by about 1.7 million people, making it the most spoken indigenous language in Mexico. What I found through interviews with native speakers is that it’s a very visual and metaphorical language. (For example — one word for “hat” comes from the words “house” + “hair”). What I found from both my user survey and investigation online is that there is an opportunity to connect indigenous artisans and designers in Mexico, through language.

The majority of people consider themselves as multimodal learners, closely followed by visual learners.

The second part of my research was based in language learning, and how people learn online or on apps. For this part, I interviewed several language professors and linguistics experts, who gave me more information about how the human brain reacts to digital stimulation. (Hint: we are very visual, but also need a lot of feedback.)

What sort of product could we create for Mexican artisans and designers?

My user persona profiles details Alejandra’s biography (31-year-old woman), frustrations (working with an oral language she doesn’t understand) as well as motivations (fair trade business and sharing Mexican culture with the world.)

I conducted a second round of interviews with Mexican designers and fair-trade business representatives to determine their workflow. There are several business in Mexico which rely on indigenous artisans to create designs and textiles or jewellry, for example, which are later modified and/or sold as is in the city, or even to international customers. During this process, business owners often rely on native translators but there are always words or concepts which cannot be translated perfectly and both parties are left frustrated. While there are many indigenous languages in Mexico, an app to learn Náhuatl is viable given its presence in the country (and businesses confirmed with me that they do work with many nahuatl-speaking artisans.)

A journey map showing Alejandra’s pain points (due to language barriers) at the moment of visiting indigenous artisans for the first time and trying to communicate their concepts to other people in her business.

The user needs for this project I decided to focus on include:
- facilitating clear communication
- creating a visual archive of indigenous terms and concepts
-using creative ways of expression
-sharing knowledge of traditional customs
and
-combatting prejudices through an interactive platform

How do users perceive what I have created?

I saw this project transform rapidly during the week as I received more commentary and feedback during user testing. During card sorting, users told me they wanted clear titles (for example the word “archive” was confusing instead of “my words”) and the ability to search for words from the home page of the app. When I showed people my lo-fi wireframes, they told me they would like to see more phonetic information and a capacity to hear the words being read. During initial prototyping, they told me they wanted a simplified user flow with less buttons and more options to navigate from the home page. This feedback helped me create an optimised user flow, as well as a site map, which you can see below.

My site map (in Spanish) for a language-learning app which I divided into subcategories of test your vocabulary, draw a word, search words, my words and settings.

What could a final product look like?

In Week Three we reached a mid-fidelity level of wireframing — below is an initial illustration of what my Nahuatl language learning app would look like.

This wireframing shows the app home page, ability to draw a word to explain it visually, save words to a personal dictionary and test words with audio capacity.

Try my InVision prototype here.

Week Three was a challenge in the quantity of work we had to carry out in order to reach mid-fidelity wireframes in 5 days. This project I enjoyed given its cultural focus and I received feedback from stakeholders that it’s an app which could have reach in the real world.