ROLE
12-week independent research and design
AWARD
Honorable Mention in the 2019 Creative Communication Award
Introduction
Paddle is an educational app designed for current/prospective international students/workers who have fundamental textbook English knowledge and want to improve English to better engage in real-life conversations.
Paddle’s flexible features help people make progress at a comfortable pace, just like paddling.
The problem
Many international people find it challenging to employ their English knowledge in real-life conversations, which has constrained them from blending in, having a holistic life, and having a sense of belonging.
The persona, Andrea, is inspired by the qualitative user data. Andrea is an international PhD student studying bio-engineering at University of Washington, Seattle. Her English proficiency is good enough to handle work and study. To make full use of her life in the States, she wants to improve English to better express herself and understand other people.
Research and insights
My UX research is conducted around these three major questions:
What are the major problems for international people to engage in English conversations?
What are the major problems for international people to improve English?
What should be different in terms of content and methodology comparing to existing competitors?
User survey
To define the scope of the project within the context of the problem, I decided to start with an online user survey. The 32 participants are current/prospective international students/workers from different countries (PR China, Taiwan, Japan, Ukraine, India, Germany, Peru, Sweden). Here are some key survey findings:
Qualitative interviews
I then conducted qualitative interviews to understand potential users’ frustrations and needs through their English-learning experience. During the interviews, I asked unbiased, open-ended questions about their learning content, learning methods, review methods, and the gap between what they’ve learned and how they employ the knowledge in real life.
I also interviewed the professionals (peers with great English proficiency and English teachers). Many of the professionals’ suggestions could potentially solve the users’ problems:
The qualitative interview findings suggest:
Videos provide immersive environment for English improvement.
Trending, fun, informative content are more likely to inspire daily conversations.
You need to use the expressions in real conversations to make progress.
Learning should focus on understanding and practice instead of forced memorization.
Practice, note-taking, and review are important learning methods but hard to persist.
Competitor analysis
I conducted competitor analysis based on the popular products that the users have used. I analyzed 5 products’ target users, learning content, methods, main features, interface structure, and feedback. I further picked 2 competitive products, VoiceTube and OpenLanguage, to break down their learning content and methodology.
The competitors’ common limits are:
Overloaded information with generic recommendation and categorization
Not likely to inspire real-life conversations
Lack of effective practice and review features
Most importantly, international people who have fundamental English knowledge are a pretty neglected user group. Paddle’s opportunity area is helping international people better understand the culture and trending topics as well as reducing the gap between their textbook English knowledge and real-life conversations.
Ideation
My research suggests that for the potential users (international people), good English-learning experience should have proper, informative content that could inspire real-life conversations as well as effective methodology that focuses on understanding, real practice, and memorization.
Information streamline
Paddle’s English teachers are native speakers so that they understand the culture and trending topics better. They prepare the highly selected and daily updated content. When learning with Paddle, users can take notes and save the words that stand out to them to their personalized notebook. At the end, when users review their notebook, they can focus on the words that are most useful to them.
User storyboard
Iterative prototypes
To polish the user flow, I conducted three rounds of testing, evaluation, and iterations. The mid-fi prototype V 3.0 provides users with clear visual hierarchy, intuitive navigation, helpful directions, and crafted filters.
The solution
Now I’m going to walk you through the journey using Paddle. Every day, Paddle provides 3 sets of bite-sized video and conversation. The topics are based on what’s trending among native speakers or the upcoming holidays and events. Today’s first topic is Halloween since the spooky holiday is only one week away.
1. Preview words and phrases
Before learning, users can preview the selected words and phrases in the videos and conversations to get a deeper impression of them. The words and phrases are categorized by “Everyday”, “Slang”, “Culture”, and “Terminology” so that users can get a sense of the frequency, difficulty, and the occasions to use them.
2. Learn from the videos
Paddle’s video source is embedded YouTube videos from popular, informative channels (such as Vox and Wired). Today’s first video is by Vox, talking about creepy clown craze. While watching the video, users can freely scroll to browse the transcript and use the “Play” buttons to go forward or reverse to the exact sentence in the video.
The selected words are highlighted by bright underlines in the subtitles. Single-tap a selected word reveals the BRIEF explanation card. If users want to learn more, they can double-tap the word or use the “Notes” button on the brief explanation card to expand the FULL explanation card. On the full explanation card, they can easily take notes and save the words that stand out to them to their “Notebook” for future review.
3. Practice in conversations
Paddle’s conversations are original records of the conversations between Paddle’s English teachers. Today’s first conversation is two English teachers talking about Halloween costumes. The learning experience is similar to learning from the videos. After learning, users can select a preferred role to play and practice in the conversation. They can also select how much hint they need for the practice. Through this process, users can practice what they’ve learned in their own sentences in order to strengthen memorization and make real progress.
4. Review personalized notebook
The personalized notebook keeps the words and phrases that stand out to the users. Users can review the words under alphabet mode or shuffle mode. Single-tap a word reveals the BRIEF explanation. The “Notes” button on the right reveals the FULL explanation page. The “Play” button on the full explanation page serves as a bookmark - It navigates users back to the video or conversation where they last saved the word so that they can pick up the context quickly.
5. Explore more topics
One set of video and conversation takes about 10-15 minutes to learn and practice. Users can also explore more topics through the “Search” button on the homepage. The topics are categorized by “For you”, “Upcoming”, “Trending”, and “Life”.
Style guide
Reflection
Paddle was my first independent UX research and design project. It was a very valuable learning experience. Through the comprehensive research and design process, I found one method particularly useful. It was the communication with people working in different fields. I’ve learned a lot from different perspectives: users, PMs, researchers, developers, and potential investors. The valuable communication has inspired me to keep reflecting and refining my logic among the different perspectives.
Validation: If the app is built, I can combine quantitative data with qualitative data to better validate my design. Active users, retention rate, task completion rate, page views, would be some important key metrics.
Further engaging the users: Paddle’s highly selected content and flexible features are easy to follow and persist. This is already a natural advantage to keep users engaged. However, more fun and creative features (gamification, rewarding systems) are worth exploring in order to further engage the users.
Scalability: Paddle has great potential to serve wider user groups in different countries. The design needs to be responsively adjust to different languages and culture. For example, when designing for people who want to improve Japanese, the design should reflect Japanese culture and adjust the layouts for the block characters.
Many thanks to my friends who helped validate my ideas and evaluate my design. And thank you for reviewing this project :)