DOVER
Language learning meets binging watching
Language learning meets binging watching
" One major difficulty language learners encounter along the way is speaking improvement. Mostly, they won’t gain the fluency unless they spend time staying abroad. "
The language learning market seems saturated, but when peeled away, there are so few products that can help intermediate learners to develop their fluency. Many learners can read and listen, but struggle with speaking. Their progress often stalls because of limited access to practice with native speakers and lack of motivation. We want to address this pitfall in exist solutions by designing an effective and engaging way to help learners improve their speaking.
Dover is a language learning platform that pairs speaking practice with video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. It provides a fun and effective approach for learners to practice speaking through dubbing over their favorite TV shows. By listening and mimicking dialogues of native speakers(a.k.a echoing practice), learners gain correct mouth muscle memory to improve their fluency and pronunciation.
Context
MHCID Capstone,
University of Washington
Team members
Ann Lin
Liyi Chu
Collin Walker
Amy Roberts
Responsibility
Product Design
Interaction model
Experience flow
UI design
Video editing
User Research
We identified target user and paint points by interviewing five experts in language teaching and technology. Experts reveled it's really challenging for learners' to improve speaking when they can’t spend time staying in a country where the language is spoken. By only learning from a course setting, it’s hard for students to engage in organic conversations and stay motivated to keep improving. This is especially detrimental to intermediate learners who are at the cusp of developing fluency.
After investigating current products, we decided to develop a solution in the independent - entertaining area. Our target users can freely practice by their own and better stay motivated in fun learning activities.
How can some learners acquired strong speaking ability, even if they had never been staying abroad?
We conducted semi-structured interviews to gain insights from 8 successful learners’ personal experience . We asked learners to draw a timeline and talk about when and what they did to learn. Telling stories along with a timeline can better remind people of details in a long journey. At beginning, they had trouble telling us how they “learned” the language. But when we asked what they did “involving” the target language, the learners began telling vivid stories. As it turns out, they never thought of it as “learning. Also, after exploring different language learning methods with 5 teaching experts, we learned that echoing practice is a powerful way for learners to develop fluency.
‘‘ I watched through the entire series of Friends three times. It helped me learn natural conversation as well as about American culture .
‘‘ I watched through the entire series of Friends three times. It helped me learn natural conversation as well as about American culture .
‘‘ I like La Liga and I wanted to see what Spanish news sources were saying about those players.
‘‘ I like La Liga and I wanted to see what Spanish news sources were saying about those players.
‘‘ When [echoing] properly, you put the correct resonance of a new speech form directly into your auditory system and simultaneously seek to match that resonance with your vocal output . . . you get into the physical habit of reciting entire dialogues aloud and correctly.How can this fail to improve your fluency?
‘‘ When [echoing] properly, you put the correct resonance of a new speech form directly into your auditory system and simultaneously seek to match that resonance with your vocal output . . . you get into the physical habit of reciting entire dialogues aloud and correctly. How can this fail to improve your fluency?
We clustered research findings into topics to help surface the patterns. Top five design principles came out which can best address our target users' pain points.
We start with unstructured ideation first (faucet thinking) and then narrowed down by adding design constraints one at a time (funnel thinking). This helped us foster a more natural flow during the brainstorming session that created promising concepts that were unconventional and grounded in our research findings.
User interviews helped us evaluate and finalize the product concept. We selected ‘’Dubbing over shows'' as the final concept. Our final concept involves assisted conversation mimicking that helps the learner pronounce in a correct manner. Once they successfully mimic the conversations with assistance, then they can enjoy the fun of freeform dubbing over the scenes. Building from what we learned in the interviews, we also fleshed out the final concept while focusing on our design goal. This ensured that our design solution provides an engaging user experience that a user would love to use, instead of just a product that the we “think” a user will love to use.
User interviews helped us evaluate and finalize the product concept. Building from what we learned in the interviews, we also fleshed out the final concept while focusing on our design goal. This ensured that our design solution provides an engaging user experience that a user would love to use, instead of just a product that the we “think” a user will love to use.
In this stage, there were three main challenges we tackled on :
Through countless iterations of combing through every detail, we finally distill a simplified and intuitive interaction model and flows for all complex tasks. The interaction design led to a series of wireframe to guide the development of the UI and prototype.
Based on the task flow and interaction model, we determining the information architecture and it led to a series of UI wireframe.
Our functioning prototype was built on Adobe Premiere and Unified Remote (a custom mobile remote platform). Participants could record their voice directly on top of the video and have it played back to them. These functions gave us the ability to validate the main test goals.
We ran test with 5 language learners. Each participant was asked to complete tasks out-loud, followed with an interview. Through identifying main takeaways in the usability test, we further improved the ease of use of our final design.
While watching a show, by double tapping the subtitle, learners can mark the dialogue for practice afterward. Furthermore, learners are able to navigate the video to the next or previous lines effortlessly by just swiping left or right on the subtitle area. They won’t need to split their attention on rewinding the video to an accurate point, so watching experience won’t be disrupted.
