Vocab Prep

Vocab Prep was the very first UX project I have ever worked on. It was a short prototype project that was a vocabulary app for learning. I added two features on the app that are on the prototype. The first feature is how to start a vocab game on the app, and the second being how to create a deck & add vocab on the app.

Note: this project is more focused on the UX than the UI.

One of the very first things I did beginning the project, I made a competitive analysis, followed up with doing user research & interviews after with 3 participants in person.

Interview questions:

  1. Tell me about yourself. What’s your name, age, occupation, are you a student, where are you from?
  2. What does your day usually consist of?
  3. Do you study & how do you find time to study?
  4. How do you study & what is the best way for you to study?
  5. Do you use an app to study sometimes?
  6. What has been the most challenging part when it comes to studying?
  7. What can make studying easier for you? 

After interviewing my 3 participants, I learned the way they were thinking, feeling & doing during the interview process.

My first participant’s results:

Thinking – 

I believe that learning vocabulary is not so difficult. All I need are flashcards & I’m good. I think that it is great that there are different ways of learning vocabulary now. It would be more beneficial for my kids to use the internet & apps than me. 

Feeling –  

I feel like learning is easy for me. I don’t struggle to learn vocab at all. I feel like my kids need studying peers maybe online or some fun ways to study online. 

Doing – 

I am a financial planner with a wife & 3 kids. There are many additional certifications you can get to show your value to companies. I took out the time a few years ago to study hard & use physical flashcards & sometimes would get my wife to test me on them when I feel like I want a challenge. For my kids, I would want them to have fun studying. It’s difficult sometimes needing to sit down with my kids 24/7 studying with them. There should be some fun apps for kids to study on that are interactive. 

My second participant’s results:

Thinking – 

I believe that studying with peers & collaborating together makes it easier to study

Feeling – 

I feel annoyed sometimes when I can’t remember a definition or word. 

I feel like having apps with a variety of ways to studying would be easier.

I also feel like having more apps that would have people from all over the world to do collaborative work with could be more fun too & easy too. 

Doing – 

I am a college student, I take notes & will look back at them & have my friends quiz me or play little online games with me to make it more fun. I enjoy going into study groups. I am in need of more people to help me study when my friends are not available to. 

My third participant’s results:

Thinking – 

I believe learning vocabulary on the internet is a much more fun way of learning. You can be very creative with it. 

Feeling –

I feel like I can get frustrated easily when I can’t study on apps due to how they are made & set up. I feel like it’s hard for me to study when I don’t have a whole lot of different ways to study. I like a variety of ways to study. I lose attention off of studying when I get bored of it. I like visuals as well, I feel like if there were more pictures in some apps I could be more interested. 

Doing – 

I am an artist, & I am a visual learner. I struggle sometimes to learn if I don’t see things or ways of learning. Or even see pictures of what I am learning to better understand it. I am learning a lot of new vocab in my classes about music that I have never heard or learned of before. I need help studying these visually. 

After knowing how our participants were thinking, feeling & doing, we believe that by executing a fun experience for users to learn vocabulary, & to execute having a nice, appealing, clean slate on the app for users, we will achieve having more users that work better with simplicity & entertainment with improved results in learning.

Information Architecture

After gathering all the information & data based on the user research, interviews & personas, this lead me to creating the IA & sitemap for the navigation of the app. Creating the navigation sitemap helps structure out the layout & how it will function.

Wireframing & Prototyping

Here, I started sketching out the wireframes while having my flows sorted out & knowing how the app is going to navigate. I wanted it to be a simple process with not many different pages/screens to achieve tasks.

Usability Testing

One of the very last steps to finalized this project was usability testing & gathering feedback after I did the wireframing & prototyping. I tested the Vocab Prep app, & this app has vocab studying games for people that need a more fun way of studying & that can help them prep for possibly their next vocab test if so. The scope is in 2 user flows, how to access playing vocab games on the app & how to exit or end the game, & how to add vocab. After the testing I then developed the usability test report & here were the metrics, direct tasks & results.

Metrics: 

0 = I don’t agree that this is a usability problem at all 

1 = Cosmetic problem only: need not be fixed unless extra time is available on project 

2 = Minor usability problem: fixing this should be given low priority 

3 = Major usability problem: important to fix, so should be given high priority

4 = Usability catastrophe: imperative to fix this before product can be released

Final Product

After going through all the usability testing & gathering feedback from users, it seemed that the users were happy with the prototype & did not have any problems or complications with it. Here is the prototype of Vocab Prep.