POCKET ENGLISH (2015)
An app that helps young adults learning English on the go with their mobile phone. In the design, I discussed about the possibility of a better learning experience by open education, gamification, peer support, and personalization. There is an old say “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” How might we make the way more accessible for people? Education being the key to a better world, there is still massive growth potential for e-learning. Content first and ubiquity matters, since we are in the era of “Whoever owns the audience, owns the experience.”
OPEN EDUCATION
Let’s start with the content. There are many learning resources on the internet already. Even the universities are opening their courses on the web, like MOOC from Stanford and Udacity. We are witnessing the disruptive impact free online courses has on education. Educators are no longer the gatekeepers of knowledge. By
making some professional learning materials accessible for people who wants to learn English, it will also facilitate mutual trust between people to platform.
GAMIFICATION
The research have shown that educational games can enhance the effectiveness of learning. However, most of the educational game on the app store are (or look like) for kids, which makes it hard for people to take it seriously, especially for the young adults who have professional reasons for learning due to an immediate need at work. Thus, instead of making an educational game, this design applies the mechanism of gamification during the learning process.
BEING SOCIAL
Individuals nowadays are empowered and backed by powerful technologies, like social networks and mobile devices, and it is self-organizing. Moreover, social media is quickly outpacing any mess media in terms of reach, time spent, and social and political impact. Learning English is a personal experience and sometimes it can be lonely. So, in the design, I discussed the possibilities of learning with peer support and connecting with the social services.
THE CHALLENGE
The challenge of e-learning is - The dropout rate is high. Because it is easy to quit. That is a global problem among educational games as well. We need to find a way to sustain the passion of learning. Gamification is a mechanism to help people learning, but it is not the root cause of triggering the passion.
PERSONALIZING LEARNING
How to sustain this passion for learning? This question leads me back to the content again. People get bored very easily for the content they are not interested. Thus, in this app it gives users more control over the content - Give users adaptive and flexible control their learning needs.
LEARNING ON-THE-GO
The trends have shown worldwide that the time people spent on their smartphones is more than that on laptops or TV. To learn English on mobile devices is inevitable. In order to fit into users brakes, commutes, and moments spent waiting in line, the learning process has to be split into bit-size chunk.
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Concept_ Cynthia Lin
UX planning_ Cynthia Lin
GUI_ Cynthia Lin