Cantochat

Duration: 3 months, Jan-Apr 2021
Role: Product Design, UX/UI design, Illustration, Animation, Sound Design
Website: www.cantochat.com

Did you know that every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker?

Cantochat brings native language learning into the hands of young children through their favourite form- gaming. The app is designed to support second, third (or more) generation migrant families to remain connected with their heritage- what is now a minority language at their new home. The first design focuses on the Cantonese language, reflective of the 300,000 people who are expected to immigrate to the UK with the recent visa scheme offered to Hong Kong.

See the continuation of this project.

Project Plan

The Double Diamond Methodology was adapted for this project. To ensure smooth running within the limited time frame, a project plan and road map were produced with specific tasks for each stage.

Discover stage

Interviews & Surveying

British-Chinese participants were specifically recruited as they are the target audience for this project. Interviews were conducted with 9 participants, where the data was then fed in to be validated through surveying- which received 77 responses. Key findings:

Levels of Cantonese is decreasing per generation
0% of 1st generation do not know how to read or write Chinese
45% of 3rd generation do not know how to read or write Chinese
Learning Cantonese is still very important to British Chinese
84% of respondents would not say Cantonese is their first language, 71.6% rated an 8 or higher out of 10 in importance that future generations learn Cantonese.
Chinese school is not the most effective method
Only 18% of participants made it to A-level standards and approximately 20% expressed they stopped learning because Chinese school was too boring, too difficult and was too much on top of normal schooling. Parents expressed it was too expensive and too time-consuming to send them to school on a weekend, with a top set back that they won’t be able to support their learning personally, which is often a requirement.

Competitor Analysis

Analysing methods parents currently use to teach Cantonese to their children provided insight into the gap in the market. English-language learning resources are more extensive and catered for young audiences, where Cantonese options are scarce and Chinese learning resources generally focus on Mandarin.

Secondary Research: Business models

There several business models to bring an app to monetization. These are each explained and analysed in the following table, which concludes that a Freemium Model is the most suitable business model to adapt for this app.

Define

Data Analysis

The data was analysed using affinity mapping and use of charts.

Personas, Empathy maps, User Journey

Three personas were created based on the data collected in the Discover Phase. These focused on the parents, as they are the decision makers to permitting access for the children to apps.

Minimum Viable Product

Adopting an agile methodological approach, it is essential to specify the minimum viable product.
The project focuses on solving the following challenges to Cantonese language learning:

Specific issue

Decrease in the Cantonese language through migrant generations.
Parents do not feel confident in supporting their children in Cantonese due to their lack of fluency.
There are a lack of Chinese schools available- and when there is one it’s very time-consuming to travel to.
Children find learning disengaging.
Cantonese learning can get expensive- whether with books or constantly buying books for home learning.

Solution ideas

Support Cantonese learning from a young age- a prime time period for children in language development.
Target age: 2 to 6-year-olds.
A self-learning app that does not require parent support for the child to succeed.
A mobile app ensures it can be accessed anywhere in the world.
93% of UK children are gaming. The app will focus on gamification and adopt as many game mechanics as possible to increase engagement for children.
Cantochat will adopt a freemium business model, which can ensure everyone is capable of learning Cantonese!

Develop Stage

Ideation

Ideas were collated using the data collected and using principles of emotional design and UX design, then organised into categories to be translated into wireframe sketches in the next stage.

Wireframe sketches Iteration 1

Early ideas were visualised as wireframe sketches. Some initial sketches include:

Simple start screen
Animated story introduction
A basic format where the main character is a bird that visits different buildings
Activity type concepts- drag and drop, connect the lines, select the correct answer.

Content Workshop

A content structuring workshop was held to speed up the content creation process. Organising over 200 Chinese characters taken from the secondary research, they were organised and converted into short, story-based activities.

Wireframe sketches iteration 2

Taking into consideration the content structure developed, changes were made to the wireframe sketches to incorporate the narrative plot. The content was also structured more clearly into the areas they would appear in.

Information Architecture: Site Map & User flow

The site map highlighted the hierarchy and relationship between pages. This is an iterative process, where the production of wireframes to high fidelity prototypes may influence changes to the site map and vice versa. The site map included future development considerations to ensure the structure would be suitable.

Artwork & UI design

Due to the nature of the game heavily reliant on graphical elements, the UI was designed simultaneously with the artwork in Photoshop.

Animation

Some simple frame-by-frame animation was created in photoshop to give movement to the main avatar and other small UI elements such as the buttons and music notes coming from the piano.

Music & Voice Overs

A simple original tune was produced with a digital piano and added into the game. Due to the lack of resources, it was recorded with a voice-recording app on a smart phone and converted into an MP3 file to add to the prototype. Voice overs were first scripted and recorded in a similar fashion.

Deliver

High Fidelity Prototype

The high fidelity prototype was created using Protopie which allows more game-like functions, such as drag and drop, compared to other prototyping tools.

User Testing

Due to complex procedures required to gain permission from the University in order to test on our target users- children- five parents were invited to provide feedback on the final prototype instead. Parents were sent an online link to test, with the moderator on hand via video call to assist them. Considering social distancing laws, testing took place online.

The participants provided insight into several issues in the prototype:

The settings area is too easily accessible to children
It was unclear new areas/activities were unlocked
Users were not able to exit an activity if they clicked on the same activity by accident
Users did not know what to do in an activity
Users would like more control over the volume of music and voiceovers

A set of redesign suggestions was made. Overall, participants responded positively to the prototype and felt their children would enjoy playing this app. Participants expressed they believe this would be a good method to encourage Cantonese learning for their child and would be happy for their child to use it on a regular basis.

Reflection

In reflection, time was overspent on the discovery stage which caused little time for iteration when these eventually led to prototyping. It was established early on that the project will likely lead to a game-related app, which should be anticipated is more labour-intensive given the graphically heavy nature. Though overall, this project has been a success provided the amount achieved in the short time period of 3 months.

The next steps to this project would involve implementing the redesign suggestions from the latest feedback. More activities types should be included to provide a more wholesome experience for users (e.g. connect the dots, voice recognition). There should also be a “locked” outside world, so that users are able to anticipate more content to come, supporting the freemium model. The narrative focus on this project was also weaker than anticipated due to the time constraints. Although some narrative was incorporated into the activities, a bigger story should be built to keep the user engaged and wanting to explore the larger world. Furthermore, it should be tested with the 2-6 year old children for direct feedback from our target user.