Developing a language learning tool
Background
Emotech is an award-winning AI start-up. I worked as an interaction designer and researcher for one of their early stage children’s English language education projects. During this project I explored potential directions for the project alongside designing and prototyping new interactions to be tested.
The company shifted it’s attention towards developing an AI-driven English pronunciation assessment demo for an international conference. The platform allowed users to have personalised feedback on their pronunciation. Following this shift, I worked as a front-end developer to aid the development of the platform.
My role
I worked as an interaction designer, researcher and front-end developer during my time at the company. Responding to the startup’s changing needs, I was able to learn React JavaScript, CSS and Git to quickly and reliably aid the implementation of the following application within 2 months alongside a data collection site for Emotech.
Design process
We followed a research-led design approach. This involved remote focus groups, desk research, competitor analysis, storyboarding and more.
Research indicated there was great opportunity to explore AI and AR to improve language learning lessons. Alongside to this desk research and weekly English teaching focus groups with Chinese individuals identified common difficulties and language learning mistakes.
From the competitor analysis we also identified that existing virtual language learning platforms lack in personalised feedback when teachers are not present. In addition to this many individuals also lack confidence when speaking in a foreign language. Therefore we decided to develop a virtual and personalised language learning platform.
Working with tech
I took part in the engineering workflow in order to aid the development of the platform, this involved creating pull requests and responding to comments of other engineers, before merging my code into the development branch. Throughout the process, usability and design improvements were quickly able to be implemented. The experience enabled me to bridge the gap between design and engineering.
Functionality I developed included the flow for client's API, sidebar, localisation functionality, start page, summary page, sentence progress bar, carousel containers, conditional feedback prompt and error pop-up.
“We definitely couldn't have done this without you”
- Attila, Senior Software Engineer at Emotech
Outcomes
The platform I helped develop offers personalised feedback without real teachers being present and will soon have an effect on the English speaking capabilities of non-native speakers. The demonstration of the technology improved client relationships including accelerating a £££££££ investment and improving the company's competitor gap.
