New Lingua, a language learning app made for everyone

Case study
Mockup of review page

Why I decided to work on this project

The main problems found on my research and interviews showed that:
   1. Users usually find hard to keep consistency with their learning, they get distracted and end up leaving these apps.

   2. Some don't feel like there is a progress in their learning.

   3. There are many apps that don't use actual voices and this can    be uncomfortable for the users because they want to hear the language.

Competitive analyses

Duolingo

Overview:
Duolingo is an app widely known, it has a lot of languages you can learn through the app, and their use of rewards and visuals make the app more engaging. I used this product and asked other users about what they like and didn't like.
Duolingo onboarding

Positives

Good visuals: the app has really good visuals and animations that can be entertaining.

Rewards and achievements: There are streaks, achievements and leaderboards, this helps to engage the audience.

Lesson complete duolingo

Negatives

After you're done with the onboarding process, it takes you directly to some exercises without explaining how it works, which can confuse the users.

Over the comment section on some exercises, I noticed that there where people complaining about the sound of the words, which are computer voices, and this can make the pronunciation confusing or disturbing.
screenshot of comments in an exercise talking about how Duolingo doesn't use human voices
Main screen of Babbel

Babbel

Overview:

Babbel is a language learning app that focuses on lessons and live classes, they have a free version and a paid version, with inlcudes more benefits like all the live classes that you want.
Courses screen Babbel

Positives

Clear bottom navigation that lets you know what each each section is about.

They let you take a test to know what level you're in.

They have live classes which can help you gain real life experience.
Select a subscription Babbel

Negatives

They only offer two free classes and one live class.

The visuals of the exercises are too simple, they could use animations.

Main problem I decided to focus on:

I decided to focus on getting people more engaged with the app, while make them feel like they're improving on whatever language they want to learn. This could be good for both the company and the users, if we were able to maintain the users we would be able to keep the earnings going as well. I tried to gather the main why's on my persona.

Creating solutions with empathy:
user persona

Meet Amy

A 19-year-old med student living in Tokyo, Japan, that also works part-time as a waitress.
“I want to be able to learn a new language with the few spare time I have left between my duties and feel like I’m still learning.”
“I’ve tried online classes but I never get to finish them.”

Why I decided to do this persona:

Like I said before, this persona shows the main problems of the users based on my research, in this way we can focus on and gain empathy with the user.

Mid fidelity paper wireframes

Course overview screen, different styles of learning made for everyoneOnboarding first pageOnboarding last page, "learn in as little as 10 minutes with personalized goals"

Personalized goals

Most of the times, because there's a lot going on in this days people get distracted from what they want to do. With personalized
goals the users wil be able to learn in a few
minutes if they want to or feel like they're in
a hurry, while those that can fully dedicate to
study a language can do it.

Different styles of learning

There is multiple research that shows every human learns everything mainly in four different types of styles:
  • Visual (learning by seeing)
  • Auditory (learning by listening)
  • Kinestesic (learning by doing)
  • Reading and writing
I decided to a section for each style, this could help the users improve their learning because it's going to be easier for them to gather information in a style they feel comfortable with. There is also a mixed section for those who want to mix the styles.

Usability tests

What I decided to focus on and why

Profile screen, where users can find and edit their goals.
"With your busy schedule, you're trying to keep on track with your learning, so you think creating a schedule would be better. Go ahead and create a new schedule goal."

I was able to see how easy it was for the users to find and create a goal, this to see if I needed to make some changes in the structure or navigation of the app.

Vocabulary page
"After learning a new word in school, you want to write it down to remember it. Add a new word  to your vocabulary."

I wanted to know how easy it would be for the users to add a new word to their vocabulary and how this would help them to remember words or phrases.

New Lingua main screen.
"You're on the bus and you have 20 minutes until your next stop. Complete a new writing exercise."

With this task, I wanted to know how much time It can take to the users to complete an exercise, if they found it useful and how useful they found it. I also wanted to test if they understood the difference between each style of learning and how to use them.

Usability test report

3
Observation
Severity
Recommendation
1
Some of the back buttons weren't functioning
Add the necessary links to the prototype.
2
The onboarding of the app could be better looking
3
1
Task #
The main screen had a problem where I wrote review instead of read so that confused the participants.
Make improvements on the order of the screens and the visuals as well.
Change the word to "read".
4

Improvements

After making all the necessary improvements from the recommendations on my usability test report, (changed the order of the screens, added "read" instead of review, added all the necessary links) I started creating high fidelity wireframes where I did some improvements as well.
female holding a phone

High fidelity wireframes

High resolution New lingua mockup home page

I decided to change the bottom navigation, with a circle rounding the current page instead of the square, I did this because I realized the square above used to occupy more space that could be used on content of the screen.

Before, the third section had two words instead of just one (study/review) which needed more space and there wasn't the need for both words. I decided to keep the word "review" because the meaning of the word is more connected to what that page is intended to do.

This is the start of the onboarding. I decided to change the language settings at first because sometimes the users want to change their language settings to the language they're learning to get a more immersive experience.

New Lingua mockup first page of onboarding screen
Setting a goal mockup

This personalized goals can help the users set their own schedule based on their needs and daily duties. Here, they are able to switch for a 10-minute learning everyday, or an hour two days a week. The app would send them push notifications If they want to prior to starting their learnings as a reminder, with a mandatory push notification at the time they set their studies on the schedule.

Prototype

Setting a goal gif recording

Conclusion

There are many problems that could be found on actual learning apps, from the feeling of not actually learning to forgetting about goals, this can be overwhelming.
With New Lingua, I tried to do a different aproach to solve the problems of the users by mainly adding different styles of learning as options, it is known by many research that almost every human falls into one or many of this categories. With this, the users will be able to learn faster by getting knowledge in a way that they understand it, or they can simply mix everything if they'd like. There's also personalized goals for those that want to receive a push notifications specific times and days, and other features like a page dedicated to those who want to listen or read stuff to be more familiarized with the language.