Spotwords
Revolutionising learning for young minds, offering an unparalleled level of ease and engagement
Design brief
Design objective
Create a concept for an app that serves as playground for young learners looking to enhance their language skills in the most accessible and enjoyable way.
Spotwords should offer an unparalleled level of ease and engagement to its young friends.
Readiness for development
This concept was designed for study purposes and can be refreshed and tailored for an app per request.
Time
4 weeks (year 2019)
MY ROLE
Solo UX designer from concept to mid-fidelity prototypes
TECHNIQUES & METHODOLOEIS
User research, usability testing, wireframing, prototyping
TOOLS
Pencil and paper, Whimsical, Prott
01 - Discovery
Competitive analysis - User interviews - User personas
Competitive analysis
I selected three well-known flashcard apps for a detailed examination, aiming to assess their strengths and weaknesses in terms of user experience.
Memrise / Mondly / Chegg
User research
Insights gained from face-to-face interviews with four children aged 10-14, analysed using an Empathy Map, offer valuable understanding into their perspectives and habits.
Research goals
In order to enhance the learning experience for children, it is crucial to delve into various aspects that influence their engagement and motivation.
Identifying usual time slots for learning
Understand the typical time slots when children engage in learning activities to tailor activities to suit these peak periods of attentiveness.
Exploring the typical learning experience
Identify the elements that spark joy in learning and those that lead to feelings of frustration and adapt teaching methods to align with children's preferences and needs.
Examining previous experience with learning apps
Investigate children's prior encounters with learning apps to get valuable insights into their comfort levels, challenges faced, and preferred features. This knowledge can help to create new experience that better caters to children's learning styles and expectations.
Understanding motivations for learning
Discover what motivates kids to learn, be it intrinsic rewards, interactive activities, or tangible incentives, to design more compelling learning experiences
User persona
Meet Alice
Alice is a busy kid who always has something going on after school. She loves sports, arts, music, hanging out with friends, and playing with Lego.
Sometimes she gets so caught up in all the fun that she doesn't even realise how quickly time passes. While doing well in school is important, it's not always at the top of her list.
She sits on the couch, studying for her test. While going through the pages, she encounters a strange word that she does not understand.
She considers writing it down but decides against it, allowing the unfamiliar knowledge to slip from her grasp like melting ice cream on a hot day.
Behavioural factors
Has difficulty following a strict learning schedule
Hates feeling lost in classes of complex subjects and loses interest
Loves positive feedback and pocket money she can spend on her wishes
Needs and pain points
Needs to learn many new foreign words and concepts
Has difficulties learning new subjects such as history or science
Learning traditional way is boring
Getting good grades at school is critical
02 - Hypothesis and user flows
Problem statement - Hypothesis and solution objectives - User stories and task analysis - User flows
Problem statement
Alice needs a way to learn lots of new concepts and words in an encouraging way because she has a lot to cover and has difficulty focusing.
Hypothesis statement
Fun-to-use, personalized and visually enticing learning experience will engage Alice and help her to stay focused
Solution objectives
Make it easy for Alice to get help with words
Save words what matter to her
Keep her on a smart study track based on her time schedule and learning goals
Provide motivation to learn through enticing awards
User stories and task analysis
Task: Take a test
User story
As a young learner, Alice wants to get constant feedback, so that she can see how much she has learned and has something to look forward to such as sweets, stickers, building a “virtual city”
Functionality
Quizzes with rewards to spend in a virtual or real life and invite friends to live in the virtual world, such as a city.
Task: Capture and add a word
User story
As a primary school student, Alice wants to get an instant translation or explanation of unknown words, so that she can read and understand texts in English or science, without having to look up words in a dictionary, which makes her wary and bored.
Functionality
Ability to capture an unknown word with a phone camera from a textbook, getting an instant translation or definition, using the context around it, and saving it in a flashcard with an ability to add a personalised note, image or video.
03 - Ideating
Sketching - Wireframing - Crazy 8 - Rapid prototyping
Sketching
Equipped with learnings from competitive analysis, user research and working through the user stories and task analysis, I went on sketching, at first with pen and paper, trying out different design versions through such methodologies like Rapid Prototyping and Crazy8.
Paper Sketches
Prototyping
After voting for the best versions of screen designs I put together the user flows.
Sketches were then redrawn in digital low-fidelity wireframes and linked up in Prott for usability testing.
04 - Testing
Usability testing - Learnings
Usability testing
To replicate real user behaviours and assess app functionality I employed scenario-based tasks to mirror real-life situations kids might encounter.
These customised scenarios helped to assess effectiveness of navigation as well as the overall user flow for its ease of use and efficiency. I also identified potential challenges, points of friction pointing me to the areas for enhancement.
Test tasks
Sign up
Create profile
Add a new word to a study list
Learn new words
Take a test
Learnings
Usability tests were conducted with the same kids who took part in user research. Testing with children poised some unaccounted challenging in comparison with adults.
Here are the key learnings I got from it.
Don't test with low-fidelity mockups
Wireframes felt very real to the young testers. They wanted to click everywhere and use the app for real.
Use native language
English was not the native language of the test participants, thus, sometimes it was difficult to tell if the problem was real or due to the language barrier.