Introduction
What is it?
TraveLearn is a language learning app that can be used to learn international languages easily. This app provides various methods suitable for different type of learners to make sure a user completely benefits from the app while keeping features and navigation simple.
Who is it for?
TraveLearn is for users who love traveling and who like to learn the local travel of the place they are traveling to. This app is designed to help users learn a new language quickly and easily by incorporating visual, descriptive and audible methods of learning. This app can be used on the go and for a short amount of time every day to successfully learn languages.
My role
As the lead UX/UI Designer for this project, I was involved in the entire process including the overall strategy, user research, information architecture, user testing, interaction design and visual design.
My Approach
Understand
Competitive Analysis
Competitive research is a tool and a crucial step in understanding what is there in the market that helps identify the missing link and recognize the problem. Conducting a detailed competitive analysis on some of the successful language learning apps such as drops, memrise and stacks helped me identify aspects that would give my app an edge over the others.
The Challenge
Today's fast-paced, busy users desire an intuitive simple app that helps them learn a new language without a hassle. There are a lot of language learning apps in the market today, but most of these app cause frustrations in users due to Cognitive overload.
The challenge is to come up with a simple, effective app that does what it claims to do without providing unnecessary features likely to cause confusion rather than being helpful to the users.
Observe
User Interviews
I conducted user interviews by reaching out to 3 interviewees comprising of persons with diverse professional background with a busy life style, and those who travel often or live in a city where they had to learn a new language. .
User Interview Goals
1. Understand users’ goals, needs and motivations to learn a new language
2. Understand different approaches and techniques users have used to learn a new language.
3. Explore opportunities or gaps in competitive apps by understanding user frustrations, triggers and preferences.
Key Findings from User interviews
Point of View
User personas
Creating Mia, a proto persona and defining the Mia's personality behaviors, goals, and needs from the data I collected helped me stay focused on users' need throughout the process. Considering Mia's profile, I created user stories and job stories for the her to help me design with Mia's goals and needs in mind.
Ideate
Task Analysis & User Flows
Defining User Journeys was a crucial step towards deriving user flows and task analysis for each persona keeping in mind their behaviors and goals. I was able to better define each step a persona would take to accomplish a task by working through user flows and task analysis.
Prototype
Wireframes & Prototype
Low-fidelity wireframes were created using rapid prototyping process. This process helped me visualize user flows while defining the bones of the key features. I was able to take a first pass at the composition of each key screen and determine the best way to link them.
Once, I was able to put my ideas on paper, I went ahead to create a more refined interactive mid-fidelity prototype. This clickable prototype allowed users to perform the following tasks during testing:
1. Sign up
2. Set Goals
3. Take a test
4. Learn a new word
Test
Usability Testing
Usability testing was conducted on 3 participants using mid-fidelity interactive prototype. Jacob Nielsen's error severity rating scale was used as a tool to determine what errors need to be revised depending on how severe the errors were.
Refining Design
Design Language
After the testing and refinement of features in the app, a design language was established for to refine the design of the interface, maintain consistency and bring together the personality of the TraveLearn.
