EasyShu

A web app to scaffold the process of learning Chinese

Brief:
When I joined the team, the product already launched over a year. The first goal for me was to improve the UX of the web tool. After conducting usability tests, we realized the problems were more than UX improvement. We used design thinking to redefine the core value, conducted user research, analyzed insights, and designed potential solutions.

Through fast prototyping and testing, we learned from feedback and kept enhancing our products for providing better experiences for teaching and learning Mandarin.

My role:
UX designer in a team of 4 with CEO and CTO.
Conducted user interviews, synthesized insights from user research, facilitated ideation, built wireframes, conducted usability testing, and designed prototypes with interactions and UI.

Results:
Increased 167% user growth by addressing user needs and iterating products based on the user research analysis.

Background

There are over 40 million Mandarin learners around the world, but there are not enough teachers and resources at the same time. Meanwhile, the learning behaviors of Mandarin learners are changing but the materials and teaching methods remain the same as of almost 20 years ago. And learners do not put enough time and effort to practice as suggested but expect good results.

Usability test for the original website

When I joined the team, there was already an existing product on the market. The concept of this website tool was innovative, but there was none UX concept involved when they built this web app.

original website

I started the process by conducting usability tests to get enough feedback for the next iteration.

clip for the unmoderated usability testing

After running several usability tests, we realized that this web app tried to solve the problem which might not be fully defined.

Redefine the problem

"Who are the users and where are they?"
- Market Research

"Who are the real users and where are they?" As a UX researcher/ designer, these two questions were the first thing I had to ask and figure out. Also, "who (competitors) are in the market now? What do they do and where are they? And who do they serve?" There were several questions waiting for us to answer before we jumped into the next iteration.

We did our market research to answer these questions and found the numbers of this market for us to have a more comprehensive picture of this industry.

Industry background review

Competitors analysis

Summary of the number of Chinese learning industry

Market Review

Learning Chinese as a second language has become popular all around the world. Nowadays there are more and more Mandarin learners in this market but there are not enough teachers and resources at the same time.

When mandarin teachers would like to make some changes in their teaching materials and look for new resources, they find it difficult to have up-to-date and ready-to-use resources both offline and online. Either they spend much time to create their own materials which fit their students, or they just give up and use old materials to teach.

Competitive positioning map

Meanwhile, learners’ average age is decreasing, and more children get involved in Mandarin learning. The learning behaviors are changing but the materials and teaching methods remain the same as of almost 20 years ago. Moreover, most Mandarin learners spent less time studying Mandarin than suggested (5 hours per day, 88 weeks, total 2,200 hours) but expect good results, like having some conversations after learning a year.

Therefore, there are many problems to be solved on both sides, the teaching system and learners, in the Mandarin learning market.

How might we use technology to scaffold the learning process?

Qualitative & Quantitative Research

Field visits

We went to some high schools, both public and private, in New York City to see what they do in their Mandarin classes and the environments of their Mandarin classrooms.

We also went to the offices of Mandarin teachers to see their resources, like different textbooks, videos, Chinese traditional games, and some teaching tools.

Field visit of Mandarin class in high school at NYC

Observation

We observed how teachers prepped their teaching materials, for example, how they found useful resources online.

We observed how students studied and practice Mandarin, and how they use online resources, like Google translate, to help them learning Mandarin easier and more efficiently.

Interviews (phone and in-person)

We interviewed Mandarin teachers from middle/ high schools in the United States, tutors all around the world, teachers from the universities in China, and private institutes in China to understand their needs and their thoughts about this industry.

The learners we interviewed are from all around the world. Some of them study Mandarin in schools (middle/ high schools, and universities) and some of them learn Mandarin by having tutors who get hired by learners' employers. And some of them are self-learning. The range of learners' ages is from 18 to 40.

Some notes from the interviews

Focus groups/ workshops

We invited teachers to talk about how they design their curriculums/ units/ projects/ topics.

We also had brainstorming sessions for teachers to help them think outside the box for their teaching materials and methods.

Workshop for Mandarin teachers

Surveys

Online surveys for Mandarin teachers all around the world to understand their needs and the situations they are facing now, like teaching methods, materials, budgets, and class management.

Online and physical surveys for students who are learning Mandarin in China. The questions are focused on the challenges they are facing and how they deal with them.

Personas & UserJourney

After the research of our users, we analyzed their needs and pain points and then created personas, one for Mandarin teachers, one for adult learners. We also analyzed every step of their work to visualize user journeys.

Persona for the Mandarin teachers

One happy path for Mandarin teachers preparing materials

Redefine the problem & find opportunity Areas

What is the real problem for our users? This problem should not be vague and based on the hypothesis. We used many design methods and tools to synthesize those insights from research and redefine the problem. Then, we reviewed them and explored the opportunities.

Synthesizing insights from the interviews

Redefining the problem

Reviewing insights and find the opportunity areas

Ideation

Time for brainstorming and ideation! All ideas are worthy. We conducted this process by using different design tools. After ideation, we had to evaluate the feasibility of all ideas. We got two ideas that were assessed feasible that we decided to move forward, one for teachers and one for learners.

Brainstorming and ideation

Feasibility evaluation

Prototype & Test

User flow & wireframes

Based on the ideation session, we visualized the user flows of the ideas. One of them was an online reading tool that we were able to build the wireframe of it.

Revised user flow for our web app

Wireframe of the 2nd version of EasyShu

Fast Prototype

We used many handy tools, such as pen and paper, Keynotes, InVision, Wix, and WeChat, to build our prototypes in a very short time to validate our ideas.

Reading: a web app for teachers to create reading materials for their students. The primary users of this fast prototype are teachers.

Listening & Speaking: We used existing products, like our reading web app (EasyShu) and WeChat to create a new way to practice conversations based on learners' real scenarios. The primary users of this fast prototype are learners.

Usability Testing 2nd round

We did the usability testing of our reading tool for both teachers and students. Then we applied those feedback to launch our website V.2.

We found learners all around the world to have the usability test of our new method of practicing listening and speaking. And we got much valuable feedback to determine the next step of this product.

Our fast prototype by using keynote

Iteration

The whole process iterated quickly and continued to refine the products based on human-centered design, to facilitate Mandarin learning in an easier way.

Here are the example showing the iterations.The example are our homepages from the original version to version 3, to see how we redesign it to meet our users' needs.