OVERVIEW

Background

In July of 2020, I joined TECO Education’s product design team. I was tasked with leading the design of the app, Speak Korean, which is a Korean learning platform.

Prior to developing the Speak Korean app, TECO Education had already developed a textbook and an in-person curriculum for learning Korean. I partnered with product managers, linguistics team, and curriculum team to develop the Speak Korean experience.

RESEARCH

Understanding The Users

Our team sent out a survey to language learners to assess their struggles with learning Korean virtually. From the 257 responses we received, we identified the two primary issues.

ISSUE 01

Lack of Guidance

The lack of guidance during the complicated process of learning Korean overwhelms and confuses learners.

ISSUE 02

Lack of Personalized Learning

The lack of personalized learning experience disengages users as they encounter content are not suited towards their needs.

Organizing Data

To further understand the users of Speak Korean, our team interviewed 10 language learners to understand their motivations and struggles in learning Korean. I wanted to know why individuals wanted to learn Korean and what difficulties they had with virtual learning. I developed an affinity map from these interviews to categorize related stories and perspectives into overarching themes.

IDEATION

Feature Prioritization

Following the research, I led an ideation session with my team to decide on what features to incorporate to the app. From the ideation session, we decided to prioritize these features:

DESIGN

Laying the Groundworks

Based on user insights and ideation sessions, my teammates and I designed the interfaces and user flows for an efficient and engaging learning experience. We focused on making the process of learning and reviewing simple and clear.

Simple and Efficient Review Flow

Another user flow I focused on was the review process. Users can view the words and phrases that they have learned in the collection page. Users can practice and review previous content through flash cards, speaking exercises, and writing exercises. I prioritized making reviewing accessible and visible to the users.

Clear and Engaging Learning

The core feature of the Speak Korean app is its daily Korean lessons. Partnering with the linguistics team, I developed exercises and content structure for optimized learning; users are given a cultural lesson, vocabulary exercise, spelling exercise, sentence exercise, and speaking exercise. After completion, users are given a score and the option to repeat the lesson.

DESIGN

Enhancing the Experience

My team went back to the platform after establishing the framework to see how we could make it even better.

Personalized Experience

The onboarding quiz asks the users for their goals, proficiency, and interests. With the information provided, the Speak Korean app creates a personalized learning journey to suite the users’ need.

Speech Recognition

Users practice their pronunciation with the speech recognition function. The speech recognition provides a score and feedback by breaking down the users pronunciation by each syllable in a given term.

Visualized Progress

Users can see their weekly progress and personal learning course through My Course page and Profile page. This motivates the users to continue progressing, and ensures an engaging and enjoyable learning journey.

Gamification

Users are encouraged and incentivized to use the app on a daily basis through the streak function. In addition to the streak function, the exercises are structured as fun and simple games to motivate users to continue improving.