E-Learning, Instructional Design, UI Design, UX Research
Teaching language through story with Croissant
Croissant is an app for young beginner French learners that encourages engagement through listening, reading and drawing
Overview
Timeline
4 weeks
Team members
Two other UX designers
My role
UX Design
UI Design
Research
Tools
Adobe CC
Figma
Laser Printing
How might we
How might we help young, english-speaking people to learn french in a way that integrates into daily life and is mentally engaging
Solution
An app that teaches language through interactive story creation and encourages engagement through listening, reading and drawing.
Research
How will the user engage with a new language?
To better understand our users wants and needs, we conducted a literature review as well as two rounds of prototyping to test out different ways to get children to engage with short stories in french.
Literature review
"Bright colors catch young children's eyes because they help kids to distinguish objects from one another in their field of vision"
(Sciencing, 2018)
"Children need instant reactions and preferably in a game form from the first second of the interaction with the interface"
(Dorottya Molnár, UX Researcher, 2018)
"Drawing forces the person to process information in multiple ways: visually, kinesthetically, and semantically. It requires elaboration on the meaning of the term and translating the definition to a new form (a picture)"
(Youki Terada, 2019)
How does this solution translate physically?
To clarify how the user would move through the different lessons and phases in the app, we made paper components to structure the UX before designing.
Testing out different tactile physical avenues
We fabricated a tactile solution as well which included a single story and story blocks to place in the right spots. We moved away from this direction as there would have to be multiple story blocks, which took up too much physical space and did not integrate smoothly into parents/children’s daily lives.
Research synthesis
The research conducted lead us to a solution that lives in a digital space
We moved toward a digital solution as the two rounds of prototyping proved that a more tactile solution would not integrate as smoothly into users daily lives.
Users will engage with the application through listening, reading and drawing. Users will draw images that relate to the french story being read to them. The drawing encourages physical engagement and connects them to the content through different sensory stimulation.
Web of concepts: narrowing down the solution
We created a web of concepts to help determine the exact direction the solution would move in. Creating a visual web to attach different attributes of the solution helped us come to the conclusion that the solution would be an interactive iPad app that encouraged reading, hearing and drawing.
Jobs-to-be-done: understanding users in a to-the-point way
Rather than creating an empathy map, a jobs-to-be-done framework was completed to better understand the situation from both parental and child’s sides.
User journey
Through the child’s eyes
A user journey was created based off information from the Jobs-to-be-Done and Web of Concepts were determined. This clarified what the solution was and it included all the steps of the interaction the user would have with the solution.
Croissant
An app that teaches language through interactive story creation and encourages engagement through listening, reading and drawing.
App flow
I created two flow charts to determine the innerworkings of the application.
It is simplistic enough for a child to use to start and/or continue game play.
In-app flow
Game play flow
Game play
The game itself reads aloud a prompt in french, and allows the child to see the english writing as well.
The child then engages with the app by drawing an image that translates what the prompt says. At the end of the game, the app reads the story aloud in french, showing the child the images they had drawn. This engages the child in a mental and physical way, as they can recall what they drew as they hear and read the french being spoken.
Starting screen
First drawing prompt
Completed drawing phase
Starting story with drawings
Reading the story with drawings
Completed story phase
Reflection + final thoughts
Testing different tactile avenues in the beginning stages of research helps actualize the solution in a realistic space for the proposed user group
Iterating in UX is never complete, in the future I’d like to implement a speaking feature in the app to help with speech development and memorization of specific words instead of phrases