In order to understand the needs of my potential users, it was important to first understand what tools they currently have available, and get a picture into their current behaviors. To move towards that understanding, I conducted a competitive analysis of three popular language learning apps, and conducted user interviews.
What participants are thinking:
What participants are feeling:
What participants are doing:
- Online is a great way to learn
- It's important to encounter and use vocabulary in different ways
- (A Flashcard App) helps you learn more efficiently
- I like having options
- I feel mindless when I use (a gamified app)
- I'm happy when I see new phrases and terms that I can apply
- I don't review notes outside of class
- I use spaced repetition and flashcards
- I also learn... by doing lessons
With my initial research in hand, I was able to create a proto-persona and problem statement based on the insights from my user interviews. This section of the course is meant to be a quick overview, which is why there is only one proto-persona instead of more in-depth user personas that would be used when the designer has more time.
Proto-Persona
Problem Statement
Austin needs a way to continually and incrementally improve his German skills over time. We will know this to be true when he marks the flashcards as complete for each deck.
I also used the Define phase as a time to create job tasks and user flows. I discovered that I really love making user flows! The process of writing down the steps that the user goes through really helps organize the features in my head, and it gets the creative juices flowing for the next phase.
You can see my user flow below!
User Flow
Ideate
This is where I got to start really sketching out my ideas and making paper lo-fi wireframes. After I sketched those out, I tried out Marvel for the first time! I had used Figma to create prototypes in a prior class, but I loved how with Marvel I could easily link up my paper wireframes into a quick prototype. If you’d like, you can try out this initial prototype, below!
Test
I really love the ideate and test part of the UX design process, and now that I had my lo-fi prototype, I was able to start my usability testing!
I tested with 4 participants for 10 minute sessions each. I gave them 4 tasks to complete, and rated the issues that arose on the Nielson Severity Scale.
Usability Testing Takeaways
Issue
Solution
- It's unclear when an account is successfully created
- It's unclear when a calendar reminder is successfully created
- Users don't know what the different flashcard decks are
- Move straight to the profile page after account setup
- Add a pop-up confirmation for calendar reminders
- Update titles to be clearer, and separate app-provided and user-generated flashcard decks
After reviewing and compiling the feedback from the usability testing, I created a higher fidelity prototype in Figma and incorporated changes informed by my test data. You can see this prototype below!
Final Prototype
For the purpose of the course, this project stopped after the Testing phase.
This was my first time prototyping in Marvel, though since then I have used it for other projects.
I found that Marvel is great for quick prototypes where the designer isn’t carefully planning out their components ahead of time. I think that for a designer with very solid pre-planning, Figma may still save more time.
Through the usability testing I found that I need to pay special attention to providing clear instructions and feedback to my users, to make sure that they aren’t confused. This is something that I am continuing to develop in my skillset.
This was a fun project, and I look forward to working on more projects in the future!
