Learn Tagalog Fast Mobile

EDTECH

Increasing revenue of the learning app and recommending other ways to continuously get conversion in the future

Role & Timeline

I was the Lead Interaction Designer; I spearheaded the ideation of key design decisions found from the Design Sprint conducted by my teammate and the crafting of a fully functional prototype and played a pivotal role in validating our design solutions through usability testing.

The project spanned from 5 days as the structure used was a Design Sprint.

Role & Timeline

The project spanned from 5 days as the structure used was a Design Sprint.

Role & Timeline

The project spanned from 5 days as the structure used was a Design Sprint.

Role & Timeline

The project spanned from 5 days as the structure used was a Design Sprint.

BACKGROUND

About the project

Learn Tagalog Fast (LTF) is a language learning platform designed to help non-Tagalog speakers rapidly acquire practical Tagalog skills. Traditional learning methods often don't fit the needs of modern learners seeking to master Tagalog efficiently.

Over the past 7 years, LTF has successfully instructed a diverse range of students, including those from prominent organizations like Home Credit, the European Union, and the US Army.

What the client want to achieve:

Learn Tagalog Fast would like to double their sales per month or explore ways of generating revenue.

They also give emphasis to utilizing their existing branding from the app and improve from it.

The problem that hinders them from achieving their goal:

Previously, lessons were conducted through face-to-face sessions or video calls, alongside self-paced learning via the app. However, starting in 2022, all face-to-face and video call options will be discontinued, leaving only app-based, self-paced learning available.

WORKSHOP PREPARATION

How and why we chose Design Sprint?

Given the client's timeline of 5 days for this project, our objective was to conduct a design sprint to brainstorm and structure our concepts, ultimately delivering a high-fidelity prototype.

Skip to Design Solution

Before initiating the workshops, we distributed roles among ourselves, and I was designated as the Recruiter for this sprint.

Design Sprint Roles

THE WORKSHOP: DESIGN SPRINT

Know the Unknowns — Workshop Day 1

On the first day, our goal was to pinpoint the challenge at hand and generate multiple solutions. We needed a deeper understanding of the app's user base.

Persona provided by the client prior the expert interview

Interviewing the Expert (Stakeholder Interview)

To learn more about the business goals, we kicked off with an interview with Phil Smithson, the Founder and CEO of Learn Tagalog Fast.

As Phil shared insights, we've taken note of the "HMWs". The aim was to capture all insights and challenges that would help us curate the best solution.

Snippet of the HMW questions I wrote down.

After compiling our HMW questions, we categorized and voted on the most crucial ones:

How Might We:

• make app interesting for users? • teach conversational Tagalog? • add a quick translate feature within the app? • make foreigners fit in in? • build users’ confidence? • teach different terms in Tagalog? • design an alternative to face to face learning? • design a feature where students can curate lessons and proficiency level?

How Might We:

Following this, we brainstormed and voted, identifying our 2-year goal and Sprint Questions. Each team member contributed suggestions, followed by constructive feedback.

Long Term Goal 🎯

‘In 2 years, LTF will branch out to other Filipino dialects. (Example: Bisaya, Ilonggo, Ilocano, etc.)’

Sprint Questions

We created specific questions aimed at identifying obstacles hindering our 2-year goal.

Our Sprint questions were:

Can we create an enjoyable experience using the app's features?
Can we accommodate other dialects in the long run?
Can we offer a more effective learning method than traditional books?

Map

Next, we drew a map to help us visualize the flow of the user and have a full picture of how they interact. We split it into several important stages: Discover, Learn, Use and Goal.

Snippet of the map we decided to focus on based on the assessed opportunity.

In our case, we decided to focus on the ‘Use’ stage because we concluded that this is where we had an opportunity to capitalize on users’ interest to study Tagalog and believed we could add more value with fresh ideas. Our goal was to gain subscriptions in this stage.

Gathering Inspirations — Workshop Day 2

On Day 2, we conducted lighting demo to gather ideas and inspiration. We shared visual inspirations and big ideas within a timed exercise.

The team conducted thorough research and showcased examples of how other products functioned, including Duolingo, Memrise, and StoryLearning, among others.

Snippet of the lightning demo board

Ideation Process

We engaged in a 4-part sketching exercise. The initial three parts—Note-taking, Doodling, and Crazy 8s—served as warm-up exercises to stimulate the team's creativity:

Note-taking: Listing down interesting components from the lighting demo.
Doodling: Creating rough sketches or describing parts of our ideas.
Crazy 8s: Generating rapid iterations on paper.

The Sketching stage involved developing a detailed solution concept, similar to a pitch deck, which each team member presented. We then voted for the best concepts and explained our choices.

Each member submitted their concepts to the facilitator, who presented them to the team. We then voted for the best ones.

Final three concepts the facilitator picked that we believe can best address our sprint questions.

User Test Flow

During the User Test Flow exercise, each team member outlined the 6 steps app users need to perform, from entry point to reaching their goal of sharing feedback. We then presented and voted for the best User Test Flow to streamline our subsequent steps.

The final user test flow decided through voting.

THE WORKSHOP: DESIGN SPRINT

Know the Unknowns — Workshop Day 1

On the first day, our goal was to pinpoint the challenge at hand and generate multiple solutions. We needed a deeper understanding of the app's user base.

Persona provided by the client prior the expert interview

Interviewing the Expert (Stakeholder Interview)

To learn more about the business goals, we kicked off with an interview with Phil Smithson, the Founder and CEO of Learn Tagalog Fast.

As Phil shared insights, we've taken note of the "HMWs". The aim was to capture all insights and challenges that would help us curate the best solution.

Snippet of the HMW questions I wrote down.

After compiling our HMW questions, we categorized and voted on the most crucial ones:

How Might We:

Following this, we brainstormed and voted, identifying our 2-year goal and Sprint Questions. Each team member contributed suggestions, followed by constructive feedback.

Long Term Goal 🎯

‘In 2 years, LTF will branch out to other Filipino dialects. (Example: Bisaya, Ilonggo, Ilocano, etc.)’

Sprint Questions

We created specific questions aimed at identifying obstacles hindering our 2-year goal.

Our Sprint questions were:

Can we create an enjoyable experience using the app's features?
Can we accommodate other dialects in the long run?
Can we offer a more effective learning method than traditional books?

Map

Next, we drew a map to help us visualize the flow of the user and have a full picture of how they interact. We split it into several important stages: Discover, Learn, Use and Goal.

Snippet of the map we decided to focus on based on the assessed opportunity.

Gathering Inspirations — Workshop Day 2

On Day 2, we conducted lighting demo to gather ideas and inspiration. We shared visual inspirations and big ideas within a timed exercise.

The team conducted thorough research and showcased examples of how other products functioned, including Duolingo, Memrise, and StoryLearning, among others.

Snippet of the lightning demo board

Ideation Process

We engaged in a 4-part sketching exercise. The initial three parts—Note-taking, Doodling, and Crazy 8s—served as warm-up exercises to stimulate the team's creativity:

Note-taking: Listing down interesting components from the lighting demo.
Doodling: Creating rough sketches or describing parts of our ideas.
Crazy 8s: Generating rapid iterations on paper.

The Sketching stage involved developing a detailed solution concept, similar to a pitch deck, which each team member presented. We then voted for the best concepts and explained our choices.

Each member submitted their concepts to the facilitator, who presented them to the team. We then voted for the best ones.

Final three concepts the facilitator picked that we believe can best address our sprint questions.

User Test Flow

The final user test flow decided through voting. Double click image to zoom.

Storyboarding — Workshop Day 3

The goal of the day was to choose the solution the team will test and outline all necessary details using a Storyboard. The Storyboard allows us to sketch out the entire journey through our product, ensuring everyone is aligned on what will be included in the prototype. We began the workshop by collaboratively listing the features and components we expect to see on each screen, aiming to address the sprint questions.

As the Interaction Design lead, I guided the team to divide the user test flow and ideate 2 low-fidelity screens each based on the listed features and components.

Snippet of our low fidelity screens ready for execution on the Figma.

Once the Storyboard was finalized, we proceeded with the digital prototype, while I recruited potential testers scheduled for Day 5. Our team finished ahead of schedule, allowing us to start designing our Figma prototype.

Turning into life! — Workshop Day 4

I led the team in executing our solution with a high-fidelity prototype. With the detailed Storyboard and 4 designers on the team, we were able to create a digital prototype in Figma in just about 1.5 hours, working simultaneously.

New experiences added to help avoid churns and encourage a retention and conversion

Learner's Dashboard

Shows the learner's their progress in learning the lessons.
Gamified look for more challenging and enticing experience.
Leaderboard so learners are pushed to complete the lessons
Lesser and straightforward options.

Ask the Community

Aside from FAQs, a community question and answer to help with the stickiness of the app.
Learners can ask questions which can be answered by teachers or even their co-learners!
Replies can include pronunciation for better learning
Saving and direct reply is also available.

Interact with our digital prototype:

We had extra time, so we included additional screens to give testers a more authentic feel of the app, including:

Onboarding screens upon starting the app.
Sign In/Sign Up screens
- This was also because we were implementing a subscription feature that would require sign up/sign in.

*Note: Some iterations were made in this prototype based on the feedback from usability testing.

New experiences added to help avoid churns and encourage a retention and conversion

Learner's Dashboard

Shows the learner's their progress in learning the lessons.
Gamified look for more challenging and enticing experience.
Leaderboard so learners are pushed to complete the lessons
Lesser and straightforward options.

Ask the Community

Aside from FAQs, a community question and answer to help with the stickiness of the app.
Learners can ask questions which can be answered by teachers or even their co-learners!
Replies can include pronunciation for better learning
Saving and direct reply is also available.

The D-Day (Testing) — Workshop Day 5

Usability Tests were conducted to evaluate the prototype, gathering data by observing participants' behavior and reactions as they explored the product. The prototype was evaluated with 3 participants through Google Meet on their computer browsers.

The prototype was evaluated with 3 participants through Google Meet on their computer browsers.

As the recruiter, I scheduled three user interview/ usability tests, while our interviewer briefly prepared the script and questions needed to gather feedback on our proposed design solutions.

The goal of the day was to conduct user testing of the prototype, collect feedback, and make a decision about the next steps for the product to present to the client.

Usability Test Tasks

Task 1: Find the first lesson "Greetings in Tagalog”
- To test the ease of navigation of the app.
Task 2: Take the lesson test and complete free lessons.
- To observe their understanding of the app and test the subscription prompts on the gated features.
Task 3: Subscribe to premium feature and find the "Ask the Community" button
- To observe user reactions to accessing the gated features.

Post-Usability Insights:

After our usability testing, we made some iterations on our prototype since we had extra time during our workshop.

Likes

SUGGESTIONS

"It is pretty cool that you can ask the community in case there is something unavailable in the app." - Alliyah

"Leaderboard needs more clarity. It is a bit odd, but I am a fan of leaderboards." - Jed

"Video would be really helpful during the lessons especially for someone who has no idea on pronunciation." - Jed

"Highlight the gated features and not the price for the subscription." - Jed

"It would be great if there was an app could teach me Bisaya. Ever since I moved to Dumaguete, I have been looking for lesson and I cannot find some type of guide book for this. It would actually solve a lot of issues for me." - Alliyah

"I would like to see my lesson history so I can pick up where I left off." - Prima

POST-WORKSHOP

Recommended Next Steps 👣

From the user feedback, we came up with new HMWs question in which could be discussed in the next design sprints. But here are the summarized recommendations for continuous growth:

Implement a customizable notification system with user preferences.
Optimize leaderboard and gamification features by introducing new challenges and social elements.
Develop Taglish/Tagalog language options with accurate translations and user feedback loops.
Create scenario-based lessons for relatable learning experiences.
Extend the LTF concept to other dialects through translation, cultural sensitivity, and user feedback integration.

Please note that as of 2024, there have been no updates with this client as this was only a short project.

POST-WORKSHOP: REFLECTION

What I've learned from this project 🔆

As a lead interaction designer, the time crunch especially from the workshop day 3 to 5 was a real challenge. It was a very short time. I had to rally and motivate everyone to keep up with our timeline while ensuring we crafted solutions that truly met our users' needs. But reflecting on it now, here's what I've taken away from the experience:

Being flexible is crucial. With just five days to finish, we had to be ready to switch gears and adapt quickly.
Teamwork is everything. When things got tough, my team had my back. We supported each other and made things happen together.
Taking ownership is key. We didn't just see ourselves as designers; we saw ourselves as part of the project. We dreamed big and imagined how our app could really help learners.

Thinking back on this journey, it wasn't always smooth, and though it was just 5 days, it taught me a lot. I learned about resilience, teamwork, and the power of thinking like an owner.

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