Smart
People
Smart
People
Smart People Inc. is an educational company offering in-person language courses, that capitalizes on their unique approach to learning utilizing interactive activities to engage students.

The Challenge

Smart People would like to expand their audience by integrating an online learning platform. Their hope is that by doing so, they can provide users a flexible & cost-effective alternative to their current classroom setting.
Project Details
4 Day Sprint
User Research
User Experience Design
User Interface Design

Industry Research

The key to any great UX solution is building a firm foundation with powerful secondary research. Industry research helps to widen your scope prior to conducting user research. I uncovered valuable data regarding current and historical learning trends, which then further validated the methods thought to provide the most value.
Worst Practice
  • Curriculums revolving around grammatical concepts tend to have unfavorable results. Students taught using this method overall feel less confident and less capable of holding a conversation in the studied language.
    • Best Practice
  • Simply knowing vocabulary and conjugations does not enable a learner; rather, it’s one’s ability to use them meaningfully that makes them valuable. People are more likely to retain knowledge when the context is of interest or relevant to their lives.
    • I then evaluated the current industry leaders within the language-learning market. Creating a feature analysis chart served to clearly define what areas Smart People's competitors excel, understand the current industry standards, and pin point opportunities to introduce competitive new features to the product. The feature comparison chart provided the necessary information to synthesize and define each competitor’s key strengths in a market positioning chart-which highlights areas for opportunity within the market. The goal is to position Smart People within that blue ocean, to assure they have an optimal and competitive product.

    User Research

    My quantitative and qualitative data is comprised of the insight I attained from 56 survey responses and the 5 interviews. I determined the majority of user’s pains, gains, and current habits by organizing the data in an affinity map. This tool served to visualize the common groupings of the received responses.

    Pains

  • Remaining motivated
  • Learning relevant content
  • Lack of Personalized Experience
  • Cost

    • Gains

  • The 3 preferred learning methods include reading, visual and kinesthetic
  • 89% value learning through mixed methods
  • 76% of users want to learn a new language for their personal interest
  • The most desired features in language apps are human interaction, advanced curriculum, and flexible schedule
    • The repetition of Duolingo is bothersome. I don’t ever feel like I’m advancing or learning vocabulary I can actually use in a conversation.
    Anonymous Interviewee
    I’m honestly just really lazy when it comes to learning new languages. I’ve tried to learn French 3 different times, but I always end up deleting the app.
    Anonymous Interviewee
    I had the most success learning Spanish when I was living in Spain and fully immersed in the culture. I found conversing with native speakers to be the most useful.
    Anonymous Interviewee

    Defining Smart People’s Users

    I determined the majority of user’s pains, gains, and current habits by through use of an affinity map which served to visualize the common groupings of the received responses. The data generated led to the creation of my user persona and user journey map. Developing the user persona and journey map served as a tools to understand the primary users mental models. Through completion of these exercises I was able to uncover Bored Ben’s primary pain points, understand the context of what/when he is experiencing struggles and highlight areas for opportunity.

    Ideation

    Developing several How Might We questions that encompassed the primary user’s main pain points helped guide my ideation process.
    Minimum Viable Product
    I arrived at my hypothesis that would best solve for the users main pain points. I believed developing a mobile interactive language app that encourages users to interact with their community through gamification features will help those primary users to remain engaged while learning.
    Using the Moscow Method, I refined the initial iteration to reflect the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This impact vs effort chart serves to decipher which features will have the most impact for the user and the least effort for the business.
    Main Scenario User Flow
    The user flow showcased the user’s happy path, or ideal path supposing no errors are incurred, to achieve the main scenario end goal.

    Prototype and Testing

    Low-Fidelity Concept Sketches
    Using Maze, I tested my low-fidelity sketches with 5 users to evaluate any issues they experienced along the MVP happy path.
    Low-fidelity concept sketches
    Usability Test Results
    The quantitative data received from the generated heat maps and the qualitative data from the user’s feedback provided valuable insights on how to properly adjust the profile page to better suit their needs.
  • 80% misclick rate
  • average time spent on this first page was 31 seconds
    • Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
    Taking the user’s incurred difficulties into account, I then created mid-fidelity wireframes to reflect the necessary changes.

    Success Metrics

    We will know the Smart People Mobile App is successful by achieving the following:
    1
    High task completion rates
    2
    High customer retention
    3
    Maintaining a low churn rate
    4
    High ratings in the app store
    5
    User’s become fluent through use of the app

    Conclusions

    I identified the main user pain point to be the lack of motivation and content engagement while learning a new language digitally. Although there were many user pain points that could have been addressed, I found engagement to be the most pressing issue as it directly affects user retention. The incorporation of more adaptive learning features will provide a more personalized and engaging user experience, leading to more user’s achieving their personal goals. This communicative, interactive approach to e-learning encompasses Smart People’s business values while also providing flexibility to the at home user.
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