Projects
phraseflash
Role:
User Research, UX Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Interface Design
Timeline:
1 week
Tools:
Figma, Mural, Notion
Overview: Survival Language Lessons
This project was based on UX Challenge’s design prompt:
"Ever need to travel to a country where you don’t even know how to speak the most basic phrases in that language? How can you help travelers learn the bare minimum language to survive within days before their trip?"
Solution: phraseflash
Phraseflash is a language learning app designed for travelers, offering a personalized experience focused on essential phrases tailored to the users’ topics of interest.
With pre-made content and user-generated content, the app emphasizes memorization and addresses the urgent need for basic language skills before travel. The ultimate goal of the app is to enhance users’ ability to navigate foreign environments with confidence.
Disclaimer:
Phraseflash was conceived without any constraints in engineering, administration, or business considerations. I recognize that, under typical industry conditions, numerous features and logistical elements incorporated into Phraseflash may not be feasible.
Research
Implementing Learning Science Principles: Spaced vs Massed Study
The prompt for this design challenge had some important information surrounding the target users, including:
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Trigger event:
Traveling soon
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Time to prep:
~1 week
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Goal:
Survive their trip
Additionally, because the prompt was based on learning, I felt it was appropriate to put on my Cognitive Science hat and utilize learning science principles: Spaced versus massed study.
- Massed Study: practicing continuously with little breaks over a shorter period of time.
- Spaced study: practicing at regular intervals over a long period of time
While spaced practice can lead to long-term retention, research shows that massed practice may lead to equal or stronger temporary memory retrieval, and is more useful for those with a short term goal. It was clear that this learning method was the most appropriate for the users that we were trying to build a solution for, so we wanted to build an app that utilized this type of learning.
Competitive Analysis
In addition, I performed a competitive analysis on platforms with the goal of language learning.
The most important insights from our competitive analysis were:
- All of the competitor apps relied on some form of module-based curriculum
- Most apps force beginners to start from the very beginning -- e.g learning grammar/alphabet
- The emphasis was on people learning language as a habit, and therefore prioritized spaced repitition practice
How would Phraseflash compare?
From here, we determined we could differentiate our solution by focusing on optimizing the phrasebook experience rather than replicating traditional language learning apps.
Phraseflash should offer a horizontal learning structure that offers freedom without imposing rigid lesson plans.
User Interviews
In order to better understand the problem space and validate there was a problem worth solving, we conducted 9 semi structured user-interviews to learn about:
- How people approach foreign language preparation
- Their previous experience using language learning software
- What aspects of language are important for them to learn in a travel context
- People’s current toolbox when traveling abroad
Some of the main themes extracted from our findings were:
- Experience with language learning in the past felt random, unpractical, and lacking context.
- Memorizing certain phrases and picking out key vocab to respond helps.
- Lack of confidence is the main deterrent for people who don’t try to language prep for a trip.
- Speaking and listening is more important than reading, writing, and learning grammar.
- People find short-form content like TikToks and Reels to be helpful.
This validated our original idea of emphasizing massed practice.
Most people don’t have the luxury of practicing long-term in advance for a trip, and those who have tried have not achieved significant results.
In addition, talking to potential users helped us come up with potential solutions.
User Persona + Journey Map.
In order to better visualize who we were designing for, I created a user persona intended to guide us as we created our design. In addition, charting out the journey allowed us to understand where our solution could jump in to help.
Summary
The Problem
Our user research and competitive analysis revealed a significant gap in the language learning app market. Current apps focus on module-based learning and expect users to start with the absolute basics. This approach, which emphasizes habit formation and spaced repetition, is not suitable for travelers who need to learn key phrases quickly. They may not have the time or the need to understand the grammar or sentence structures in depth.
The challenge was to design a solution that allows users to learn phrases that are immediately relevant to their travel plans, in a short amount of time. The solution also needed to emphasize speaking and listening skills, as these are often the most important skills for travelers.
The Solution
Phraseflash is our solution to this problem. It's an optimized phrasebook app that tailors its content to the user's travel plans. Phraseflash emphasizes massed learning, suitable for travelers who have limited time before their trip. Its lessons are organized horizontally based on different topics that would be useful to the user, rather than vertically where the user had to progress from basics to advanced. This approach allows for a more personalized and efficient learning experience.
Design
I first started by imagining a very simple user flow representing our vision.
The new user experience consists of answering questions about what you want to learn to personalize your experience, discovering recommended sets and immediately begin practicing phrases relevant to their travel experience.
The user can continue to personalize their experience by creating their own sets and adding phrases/vocab.
User Testing
Lofi Wireframes
It was important for us to get user feedback early on in the design process.
We asked 5 people to complete different 3 tasks and describe their experiences. We wanted to understand:
Whether the users truly understood the purpose of the app
If the navigation was intuitive
What they liked/disliked about the app
- Whether the users truly understood the purpose of the app
- If the navigation was intuitive
- What they liked/disliked about the app
Key takeaways:
✅ Successes:
- All of the users enjoyed the idea of having videos of native speakers, and expressed that this would be helpful when learning a new language.
✍🏻 Things to work on :
- When asked what the app was for after onboarding, most answered , “language learning”. While somewhat correct, it wasn’t clear that the app served a more specific purpose.
- During the task of adding a vocab card to a set, 40% of users either did not immediately recognize the plus sign or said it might not be intuitive.
Changes:
First Iteration: Hifi wireframes
After implementing feedback of the lofi wireframes, we once again asked a new round of participants to run through the hi-fi prototype.
Key takeaways:
✅ Successes:
- After adding more information to the onboarding screen, users recognized that the app was geared towards personalizing their language learning experience based on their travel goals.
- Participants found that the layout was intuitive and simple, and the UI was aesthetically pleasing.
✏️ Things to work on:
- 4/6 participants expressed difficulty with the task of searching for a vocabulary word from the database.
- Some directly said that they expected to see it on the home page.
- Despite prompting for specific topics, users still opted for "Manners," "Culture," and "Time” the most-one participant also expressed that they would like to know which sets are recommended for beginners.
- Some users mentioned that they would have liked to be able to look through the cards before being tested on them - which is more of a prototype thing, but it’s important to make the prototype as close to the actual product to get better insights.
Second Iteration: Hifi wireframes
We took a final step back from the design and asked new testers to run through the hi-fidelity prototype.
Key takeaways:
✅ Successes:
After we added a search bar to the homepage, the direct success of the search task increased by 50%, and the time it took for users to complete the task was decreased by over 50%. of a div block.
Features
Onboarding
Users can tailor their experience from the start, with the flexibility to shape their language learning adventure according to their unique preferences and travel plans.
Studying & Testing
Study sets that prioritize featuring native speaker phrases for real pronunciation practice.
Tests are crafted to reinforce speaking and listening skills, ensuring a comprehensive language learning experience.
Search for sets
Users can easily search for the most specific of words and phrases in their target language.
In addition, the search function continues to emphasize real-world context through phrase suggestions.
Prototype
Conclusion
Through foundational research, design, user testing, and several iteration in such a short amount of time, I believe that we created a project to be proud of. However, there is definitely room for improvement.
What did we learn?
Not only did the first round of user testing on lofi wireframes help us get valuable feedback to improve the app, but it also allowed us to improve our research.
We improved our questions to better encourage participants to explain more about why they got stuck or made certain decisions.
Additionally, changing it to having all tasks start on the landing page exposed further pain points as well in the later rounds of testing.
Future Improvements
Since we decided to focus our app around massed learning, its important that users are incentivized to continue studying for long periods of time. While in the onboarding there was an option to set an amount of time, we would need to find a way increase user engagement and motivation--likely through gamification and a reward system!
Although the solution is designed for traveling users, talking to more users to discover how to incentivize consistent use of the app would take this app to the next level.