Case Study: DAILY LANGUAGE APP
Because learning languages can be easy and fun!
Let me introduce you to my first solo project at the Ironhack UX/UI Design Bootcamp. The task was to create an app to track a daily habit for people. This has been a positive learning process for me.
INTRO
Nowadays, we can learn and practise a language in many different ways! however you do it, the outcome is to be able to understand and to speak it. Learning a language is not only learning words or sentences but also learning more about the culture. This is why I decided to start with a survey to find out more about people and their language journey and preferences.
RESEARCH
The goal was to create a daily language app to make people’s learning journey easier and more fun.
These are the questions I decided to ask in the survey:
I noticed an interesting pattern on question nº4, and in fact, this question was the first one that came to my mind when thinking about the idea of learning a language: “Why are you learning another language?” I focused on this particular question and their answers conducted me to the next important question that came to my mind: “Why do people stop learning languages?”
But before digging more into this, let’s see the listed reasons why users learn a language:
- Learning for pleasure: Most users were actually learning more than one language and some took this as a personal challenge.
- Learning for socialising: Travelling, meeting new people, finding out more about new cultures were topics that some users suggested and they were focused more on their speaking skills.
- Learning for studies: Some users were studying abroad or were planning to do it someday. Some were also studying careers that needed another language added to them.
- Learning for work: Some users mentioned that this was a frustrating reason because they needed a second language to get a promotion or getting a better job position.
- Learning to move abroad: Looking for a better life and experiences, they wanted to have some basics of grammar covered before moving to a foreign country.
Now with a more clear goal after analysing the results of the survey, I started interviewing people to find out more about:
- their motivations
- their feelings during the learning process
- the methods they were using
- the methods they like to use
- how they felt when speaking in that language
- what leads to a lack of motivation
Interviews results
- The major concern was that most of the people said that learning a language was time-consuming, they were busy and didn’t have enough time to add another habit into their lives.
- As a result, most users felt like failing when dropping off and didn’t really remember their main purpose to learn.
- Most of them used Duolingo as their app-on-the-go method but gave up quickly because it became boring and there wasn’t a clear objective within the app.
- Babbel was another app mentioned and its interface seemed to be more professional and more well-structured but they didn’t like having to pay for it.
- As for online schools, Lingoda was brought up but a major issue was the membership/payment area: “It’s difficult to pause or change your membership, it feels like they did it this way on purpose”. However; they did like the fact that they can actually speak and book a class sporadically.
- Users found notifications to be quite useful when learning because they reminded them on continuing with the lessons. On another hand, they did say that too many notifications and emails were too overwhelming.
- When communicating, using a camera wasn’t the most desired choice for them, yet they were completely fine with using a microphone. They were rather curious to find out more about this feature.
- Some did go to language schools but due to COVID-19 they stopped but were open to the idea of e-learning options.
- When talking about their speaking skills, they also mentioned that they would love to know more native speakers to practise more and learn in a more “natural way”.
- In addition to this, what motivated me the most was hearing them say how happy and proud they felt when using their new skills in a conversation.
Let me introduce you to Cristina, our user persona.
“She is a girl who, like everyone in our generation, is looking for a new job and is open to any opportunities. She is a social person who is curious about new cultures and enjoys meeting new people. Due to her busy and rotating work schedule, she barely has time to sign up to classes and feels like she will never be able to learn or practise a language.”
My goal was even clearer now: I wanted to help people with an easy and approachable way of learning without having to compromise or feeling pressured.
IDEATION
I started by sketching everything on paper because I was afraid to invest too much time in digitalising my ideas and since I am still learning how to sketch, I used this as an opportunity to strengthen my skills.
After analysing what I sketched, I knew right away that I had to add a conversation feature to help our users overcome that language barrier and feel comfortable and confident when speaking with someone else.
After having a very useful critique session with my colleagues and teachers. I knew I had to make several changes, these were some questions they asked:
Is choosing a goal routine relevant within the app?
this feature was to give freedom to the user on selecting their own routine but it can turn out to be counterproductive and I decided to conduct the user by setting small and quick exercises to avoid boredom and pressure when learning.
What does slang stand for?
Based on my research, users like learning ‘slang’ words and idioms because it made them feel more connected to the current language. Slang was thought to be another exercises section but I decided to transform it into an optional exercise for them because the goal was to keep exercises simple for daily use.
When connecting with other users, how can we avoid unwanted bad experiences?
I knew right away that the connecting part might bring issues and I had to come up with a solution to this and make the user comfortable when using this feature.
This is the second lo-fi prototype I made. I knew I wanted to use only icons but I wasn’t sure if this wasn’t going to be user recognition friendly. I also realised that I was still struggling with the ‘slang icon 👀” section because it was an extra feature I wanted to add to keep the exercises part simple so I also turned it into a popup window.
I also decided to remove the ‘daily’ objective and give more freedom to the user along with the possibilities to add more native language and also learn more languages.
I added two different bottom navigation bars because I wasn’t sure which one to keep or just get rid of both of them.
I decided to start prototyping on Figma but since I knew I had to do more testing I kept it lo-fi and only using hierarchy on the text to make it more ‘finished’ and get users to test it. After the ideation process, I knew right away that I had to make some changes that were confusing some users:
I was having a hard time keeping it minimal and simple because I knew I wanted to go in that direction but simple is not an easy thing to achieve. This is the final lo-fi prototype I decided to use for my presentation, I knew it wasn’t perfect but I am so ready to learn and improve 🚀
As you can see, the goal was to create a minimalistic visual interface so when users open the language app they wouldn’t be overly saturated with too much visual information that wasn’t relevant to their learning process.
HELLO! is the name of the app, I thought of the idea of changing the word ‘hello’ depending on the geolocation of the user.
I added the sign-up screen because I wanted to see how easy would be for users to join without closing the app and doing it later or…never.
On they chose the language(s) to learn, I added at the left top corner a feature to let the user easily switch through the languages they wanted to learn.
The bottom navigation bar would appear on every section (task and talk) and give the user the freedom to navigate through all the screens. I set the ‘hello!’ as the home button.
The ‘Task’ section is for the user to learn grammar, vocabulary and dictation (this is also a listening)
The ‘Talk’ section is for the user to connect with another one and engage in a 10 min conversation exchange using the topic chosen (and also learned in the task section). There is a report button in case there is unwanted behaviour.
The ‘Expressions’ section is a popup window with daily content in more informal or colloquial language, including words, idioms or phrases to immerse the user in the modern current language.
There will always be an ‘info’ and ‘help’ button in every section of the app.
Here is the Figma prototype for you to check out:
CONCLUSIONS
I thoroughly enjoyed the research process, it led to so many possibilities I didn’t even have in mind, to begin with. I am well aware that I need to improve my interviewing skills along with my analysis methods. 🔍
I also would like to work on the communication feature and make it the star feature within the app. This seemed to bring a lot of interest from the users and they were actually excited about it. 🙌🏽
One thing I learned for sure: “there is a difference between minimalism and simplicity” Thanks Nevan! this is forever tattooed in my mind! ⚡️ Adding text shouldn’t be that awful! I am an extreme person in some aspects of my life and unfortunately, I ended up doing the same on my prototype. I have to learn to find the perfect balance between text and icons. ⚖️
My goal was to help people to keep their motivation up when learning another language and this thought has been in my mind all this time. I really hope I can actually develop and deliver this idea and also help people with their confidence and make them feel proud of themselves when speaking in another language. 💫
Thank you for reading!
