UX Designer
Jun. 2022 - Aug. 2022
Figma, Miro, Google Workspace
As second language learners, we usually find memorizing vocabulary a drill. The process of memorization is boring and the learned vocabulary is forgettable.
FUNDI is be a fun dictionary app that people would like to use for learning. The app aims to gamify the vocabulary memorizing drills and make learning more interesting. More importantly, It needs to achieve the goal of learning, not just having fun. FUNDI will enable users to retain their memories longer by incorporating pedagogical theories.
To better understand how people feel about the current dictionary and their experience of memorizing vocabulary, I interviewed 4 participants who use dictionaries regularly for study or work. They are a 9th grader student, 2 of my English teacher colleagues, and my master’s classmates.
In order to construct a concise and solid foundation for FUNDI, I chose three dictionaries to do my competitive audit including Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and Google Translation. The reason why I chose them was (1) they are commonly used by people based on the search engine (2) they have mobile apps. Also, those three are used by my interviewees for study or work.
After the interview and the competitive audit, I generate some key findings and insights.
I boil down the findings into 3 design criteria:
Based on the research, I generate 2 personas based on the insights.
The user journey map is created according to the personas:
I did quick sketches to come up with my ideas of my mobile homepage.
In order to motivate users to learn words and find happiness of study, the colors I choose are vibrant.
For the first iteration, my primary goal is to validate whether users have fun learning vocabulary, are willing for repeated practice, and willing to log in to the “my wordlist” feature. I also hope to test the usability of the design so that I can improve on it.
In order to test our product, I conducted user observations, think-aloud protocols, surveys, and interviews with 5 participants whose mother languages are not English. Here is the overview of the research process:
After the user testing, I made some changes in my design based on the users’ feedback.
Here’s the latest prototype with some of my updated changes based on user feedback. I will continue refining my design after more usability testings.
Our app’s core value is to let users practice more times to improve their English. However, most users are tired to study again and again. How can we encourage them to open the app and learn at least a word daily? I list two alternatives for solving the problem: badge notification & email notification.
FUNDI really focuses on the monster feature in order to make learning fun. Also, users suggest the level of fun will affect their willingness to practice more. Therefore, more interactions and connections with our users are needed. For example, there may be special activities or new clothes on Valentine’s Day, playing with friends may be available, etc.
Our goal is to let users retain the memory of vocabulary by practicing more times. But how to make sure they indeed practice? I intentionally put the button “feed words” at the bottom of the page in hope that learners will go through everything above such as definitions, thesaurus, and examples. But we still can’t know if they learn. Therefore, a simple assessment should be necessary to check our users’ understanding.
