Product design

UX research, UI design

Usability Testing

Prototype

Year

2019

A tool for 2nd language speakers to self-improve speaking and presenting skills by speed recognition technique. This is an individual practice in applying design principles

Public Speaking Practice Solution

This project begins with the problems of some friends and me. Communication skill is critical for us as UX designers. I looked for some classes and public speaking clubs to practice my speaking skill but they revealed many constraints such as timing, costing, curriculum limitations, class size, etc. To solve these problems, I assumed a virtual class/ language club could be an easier and more flexible solution to users. Therefore, I started to research and find the opportunities for this idea. The support technology is Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technique to transform a speed to stranscript in real time.

From my own experience, I understand the difficulties of looking for an improvement such as vocabulary, fluency, grammar, gesture, etc. Therefore, my challenge is to understand the struggles of users and deal with technology to address those problems.

Implementing Speed Recognition and AI might require complicated developing infrastructure to be able to optimise a language model to solve the complexity of language use. However, this project was an individual practice in applying design principles thus I supposed those difficulties could be solved ideally.

Challenge

Understand the problem space of people who are looking for opportunities to improve their language speaking and presenting skills.
Discover the desires of users who want to self-practice through the interactive digital tool.
Design an experience for studying language-speaking skills and improving public speaking skills.

My goal

All Projects

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is a powerful discipline of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. It can be used for countless business purposes. ASR can be defined as the independent, computer‐driven transcription of spoken language into readable text in real time (Stuckless, 1994). In a nutshell, ASR is technology that allows a computer to identify the words that a person speaks into a microphone or telephone and convert it to written text. (ASR paper of Docsoft, Inc., June 2009). This technique inspired me to help users hand off from the computer or device to practice public speaking with genuine body language.

Support from technology

To complement my understanding of the users and their problem spaces, I planned for the Survey with 10 questions about how they look for the speaking practice solutions? In which channels they are looking for? And what they really need but those solutions can not adapt?

45% of people using the second language for frequent presenting in working and studying
64% of people prioritize confidence and fluency the most critical skills of speaking the second language
73% of people prefer to practice the second language by themselves
73% People used/tried to find a digital product to practice speaking/ presenting by themselves

Quantitative research

Customer journey map

Users aim to reduce the dependence on classes and enhance the ability of self-practice. However, with self-practising users are frustrated with the accessibility of assessment which leads them to be unconfident and doubtable progress.

How might we facilitate users confidently practising and assessing their results by themselves, by that we can help them review their achievements?

Defining problems

Users' stories were sorted out into 4 stages which are login, prepare, review and redo. This technique is very helpful to organise the backlogs and identify the “could-dos” then turn them into the roadblock when I have a lot of potential features to go. Especially, it helps UX designers to stay focused and prioritize the viable features and break down others to following sprint plans. In this project, the main goal was a design to solve the problems of practising speaking and presenting skills. Therefore, to consider the scope and commit the in-depth testing, the MVP is focused on the flow from preparing to re-practising.

User story mapping

After compiling the findings from the first round of Usability testing and making changes, I conducted 2 more rounds of design, testing and iteration with 6 participants. Users got satisfied with changes which adapt to basic needs of users and the flow was concise enough to complete their given tasks. It was rewarding to me that people were excited and ready for practicing when interacting with the prototype.

Taking consideration of the users’ potential ideas and needs emerged during the interviews and testing, the initial users’ stories mapping should be extended with more features to ensure the sense of flow following:

Finding the partners.
On-boarding of personalising speaking levels and types of language

The result and next steps

Prototype link

This round of testing was conducted with six users who are using a second language for studying and working in New Zealand, 4 international students and 2 office workers. Three of them were participating in a volunteer workplace and Toastmaster club to improve their speaking and public presenting skills.

Objectives

Validate the solutions of the first round of testing
Improve the design based on user-centred refinements.

Usability testing

The first approach began with a list of assumptions to be able to brainstorm ideas and frame the research areas. My assumptions were to answer 3 questions following

Who they are?
What are their problems and the alternatives they are looking for but those can not satisfy them due to some reasons?
What are the primary values they seek?

After that, a list of feature hypotheses was created accordingly as a basis of following UX process and activities of evaluation.

Feature hypothesis

Defining the language
Providing topics

Recording audio
Timer
Transcribing audio to text
Detecting mistakes such as grammar, pronunciation,.
Correcting mistakes
Providing references to learn more grammar and vocabulary
Capturing the gesture
Past practices

Assumptions

Taking consideration of the hypothesis and features list. A step of the interview was taken with 4 users to get an in-depth understanding of users’ needs and goals. Besides, to commit a seamless process from research, define and ideation, concept testing was an effective and fast way to evaluate the feature hypothesis.

Objectives

Understanding users’ needs and their pain points when looking for chances of practising. Following that to find opportunities to develop the product
Validate the concept design and idea

Qualitative research

About practicing second language

“I always look for chances to speak”

“Time is an issue to me”

“My teacher is good but she doesn't give me detailed corrections due to the size of class”

“I don't need academic courses, I need a place to practice listening and speaking”

About the concept

“I get distracted by transcribing in real-time”

“Should I choose the topic first?”

“I get confused the relationship of audio section due to the separation of the UI”

“The summary of assessment is critical to me”