Mooji-elearning

Mooji: An affodable & engaging digital language learning platform for teenagers

Client: Smart People Inc.
Duration: 14 days
Focus: User and market research, user flows, wireframes, prototyping

0. Background

The Problem + How I was involved

Smart People Inc. is an educational company that currently offers in-person language courses for children from 12-18 years old. The main attraction is a summer camp where children can learn English or Spanish as a second language, and many teenagers join every year in different locations. The camp includes sports, outdoor activities, technologies, games, etc.

Each camp is four weeks, and each course has twenty activities and twenty lessons of which students get to pick ten that they want to take. All students receive feedback from students and coaches to track their learning progress.

However, due to cost and time reasons, students are unable to attend the summer camp but still want access to the curriculum.

My role was to come up with a solution that transforms the camp experience into a digitalized experience so that more students are able to access the camp.

I worked with another UXUI designer to execute project.

1. Empathize

Getting to know the problem

In addition to the information we had about Smart People Inc., we conducted a competitive analysis to examine current competitions and potential competitors in the e-learning market. We also created a market positioning map to visualize where Smart People Inc. currently stands in the market.

Our next step was to conduct user research. We decided to conduct interviews for to collect qualitative data that would give us deeper insight. The interview guide we created was for teachers, as we felt that teachers have the best knowledge regarding what is best for students regarding educating them.

Questions for Teachers

What are the biggest struggles when teaching language to students?
How important do you think getting feedback is for students?
How would you give feedback to students?
What are the pros and cons of e-learning versus in-class lessons?
Have you ever used any e-learning tools? How do you feel about it?
What teaching material do you think works best for students (12–18)?
How do you differentiate activities from lessons?
How do parents like to be involved in their children’s progress?

We interviewed a total of six teachers from around the world, including an English teacher, History teacher, a middle school teaching assistant, Spanish teacher, and such people with background in education.

The insights we gained were:

“if students lose confidence, they tend to lose interest in the subject”
“repetition and feedback are very powerful when used together”
“material that empowers them and makes them take ownership of their learning” [works best for students]
students should learn on “their own pace”
“feedback is extremely important” and “has to be constructive”
students “need to learn theory to apply later in activities”
“focus on usage is far more important than focusing on perfect grammar”
“good idea to let students choose between reading, writing, speaking and listening because some people learn one way and some people learn better other ways”

In addition to the interviews, we collaborated with other teams to exchange user research data, including quantitative data that validated our interview results more.

2. Define

Evaluating our findings

We created an affinity diagram to help us see trends in our data.

With the insights in mind, we proceeded to think of a user persona to set a common understanding of the final user.

We looked at the frustrations and motivations of the user persona, and tried to reframe problems into opportunities. We formulated several HMW statements, grouped similar ones together, and dot-voted.

The HMW was:

How might we help students feel confident and inspired learning a new language?

Based on our user research, we developed a user journey with a storyline of collective assumptions where the user, Adam, encounters moments of truths, or pain points, when he feels anxious or frustrated.

We then formulated our problem statement that defines the problem and captures the insights from our user research.

Students need to feel confident and inspired when learning a new language, because the current teaching system is too traditional and not dynamic enough.

In addition, we created our hypothesis statement which helped us think about what results we should look in our solution.

We believe creating an interactive and fun app for students will achieve our goal of making them confident and inspired when learning a language. We will know we are right when students successfully achieve their language goals and students give a high satisfaction rating to the app.

3. Ideate

Getting creative

We began brainstorming about potential solutions. With the HMW statement at the core, we created a mind map by grouping similar ideas together. It helped generate more ideas. The non-linear process helped us find more meaning in our topic.

With many ideas on the wall, we used the crazy eight method to turn them into original, creative solutions. We then picked one idea, and elaborated our ideas into concept sketches.

The idea we decided to proceed with was an app that had a pet avatar feature that would grow based on the students' progress.

We created a site map for the app to determine what content was necessary. To see if our site map made sense for users, we did an open card sort as a way to structure the information architecture of our product. We asked people to organize the cards in any way they thought made sense, and omit or create new cards if they felt the need to.

Based on the card sorting results, we revised our sitemap. Then, we created a user flow to think of paths that our user would take to complete a task. Also, to detect any pain points and simplify our solution quickly.

4. Prototype

Bringing the idea to life

Thinking back to our HMW, we thought about what kind of brand image we wanted our product to have. We wanted it to have a friendly, intuitive, positive and inspiring feel. We also created a brand character "Mooji" that gave our product a more approachable feel. With those things in mind, we created an interactive low-fidelity prototype.

We tested the prototype on several people, and received feedback.

Glows- What we did well:

Flow was clear and smooth
it was a fun, friendly experience

Grows- What should be improved:

too much text on some pages
some naming inconsistencies
some words were confusing to understand

After revising our low-fidelity prototype, we proceeded to make a mid-fidelity wireframe, and then an interactive prototype on Sketch.

Afterwards, I designed some pages in high fidelity.

5. Final Thoughts + Next Steps

Takeaways

The next step would be to consider other digital devices to design this app for, including tablets. Also, thinking about how teachers can get involved using the app would most likely improve the product.

Read about this project in full detail here