Interview a classmate to discover a problem in their life for which you will design a mobile app solution specifically tailored for them.
Two Days
Andrea hails from Mexico City and moved to San Francisco in September to attend General Assembly's User Experience Design Immersive.
When interviewing Andrea on the second day of class, I discovered that she was filled with excitement and anticipation of gaining a new skill set in UX.
However, one thing she kept mentioning was the feeling of being overwhelmed by a language barrier.
Andrea, a native Spanish speaker, has been speaking English for years - yet, she finds herself having trouble understanding all of the new UX concepts in class. She explained that it feels as though she has to work twice as hard at learning in this environment because of the language barrier.
She finds herself constantly shifting her frame of mind between learning UX terms in English and being able to understand the more complex, detailed concepts.
She typically uses Google translate and other translation websites to look up words during class lectures. However, these tools don't allow Andrea to focus on the pronunciation of the word and practicing it.
After running some concepts and sketches by Andrea, I realized that the scope of the app wasn't quite hitting the nail on the head.
The language barrier that Andrea is experiencing in class doesn't solely have to do with the understanding of word definitions. She needs the most help learning how words are pronounced, and practicing her own pronunciation.
"I'm not sure that it will always be so easy to take a picture of a word on the whiteboard."
Include a typing functionality on word identification screen.
"It would be really helpful if there was a way that I could save and access previously searched words."
Include a "favorites" functionality to grant easy access to previous words.