Unlocking Chinese Fluency through UXD

What follows are the approaches and resources available to Chinese learners in 2019 in Hong Kong. Although Cantonese is the primary dialect used in Hong Kong, most foreigners are learning Mandarin because of its usefulness across Chinese speaking areas.

Most foreigners learn Mandarin through formal language classes in primary or secondary schools, specialized language schools or university courses. Progress is measured using one of the following standards:

• ‍HSK. Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì, a standardized test of Chinese language proficiency structured with 6 levels corresponding to 6 semesters of study.‍
• YCT. Primary and middle school children learning Mandarin as a second language are assessed with the YCT Youth Chinese Test. ‍
• FLS. The US Government uses Foreign Language Service levels for measuring employee language proficiency. There are 10 situational modules that are followed in sequence to form the core of the FLS Mandarin course. An average learner would take 88 weeks or 2200 classroom hours to reach professional working proficiency. This roughly corresponds to passing HSK6.

People without the time to take formal language classes or who need to supplement their

Competitors

People without the time to take formal language classes or who need to supplement their

Online Learning

Online classes combine drills, videos, and live video chats with native tutors. The materials reflect different learning philosophies and different markets that were in vogue at different times. The newer ones have videos that can be searched for relevance.

These are three established providers:

• ‍Pimsleur. Developed by linguistics scholar Paul Pimsleur. Mean to mimic the way children master their first language through immersion in conversation, listening, and speaking. Unique approach to teaching tones by syllable and learning long words back to front.‍
• Rosetta Stone. Founder Allen Stolzfus set out to simulate natural immersion by using pictures and sounds in context with no translation. Originally developed around CD-Rom technology in 92. The Mandarin course is structured around 20 units similar to the FLS modules with smaller lessons that focus on pronunciation, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary within each module. Live Tutoring is also available.‍
• Chinese Pod (Mandarin). Subscription service that offers lots of Chinese listening practice at 6 difficulty levels on a variety of topics. Able to search and jump around levels and topics. Also offers basic exercises matching characters to meanings, sentence ordering, dictation and fill in the gap.

Apps

The following are newer products initially designed as apps. Their convenience is often traded off with fewer features than the online courses.

• ‍Chineasy Cards. Its premise is that most Chinese characters are built out of 100 building blocks. The gamefied program prioritizes the most common and useful elements. The imagery and characters are kid oriented so adults might find it lacking.
• Duolingo. Unique in jumping right into recalling phrases and Chinese characters. Focused on building a tourist vocabulary, its drawbacks are that one must follow a sequence and learn characters without definitions.
• Skritter. Promotes itself as the path to Chinese & Japanese mastery with a claim of 95% retention of new characters. Its method is based on tracing character strokes in a flashcard setting with spaced repetition to improve retention.

User Interviews

Based on number of app store comments and visibility in stores there is a market for Mandarin materials. After looking at the competing products and services I still needed to clarify the market size, composition and pain points by interviewing potential customers. Does the Kanxi approach address a need for enough customers to make it a worthwhile investment?  

Within the short timeframe of the workshop it wasn't feasible to setup interviews with children who are the main users of supplemental Chinese learning materials.

I was fortunate to ask a three adult learners and instructors the following questions:

• What languages did you know before studying Chinese/Japanese?
• What motivated you to study Chinese/Japanese?
• What aspects of China/Japan or the countries’ culture interest you?
• Can you tell me a little bit about your experience of learning?
• Can you describe the structure of the experience a little bit.Branch for those who did learn characters
• At what point in the course where you introduced to writing/reading Asian characters?
• Can you tell me about how the course introduced characters?
• What do you remember about the pace of learning new characters?
• What kinds of classroom exercises did you do?
• What kind of work outside the classroom did you do?
• What kind of self-study did you do on your own?
• What were the ups and downs of learning the language?
• How did you stay motivated to keep at it?
• Did you use any audio-visual material or apps?
• Can you tell me a little about the audio-visual material or apps?
• Can you describe your current level of proficiency in Chinese/Japanese

Findings

After the interviews and casual conversations with friends and acquaintances who've studied Chinese (and for the most part dropped it.) I felt that the original premise about the Kanxi Radicals was too narrowly focused on a single technique.

In Hong Kong there seems to be 2 main motivators behind learning Chinese:

• Passing a required Mandarin examination in a formal school or work context.
• Getting by in Cantonese or Mandarin when eating, shopping, and traveling when no accurate or timely English translation is available.

The biggest pain points revolve around the large amount of memorization. Faced with this issue people want to focus on vocabulary that's immediately relevant to an upcoming task. Others want to categorize it into chunks in a way that's relevant to part of an exam.

The software that's out there is crude and inflexible. Finding, making, and managing accurate lists of vocabulary consumes a large portion of study time.

Feedback & Iterations

The prototype went through a few iterations over the course of the workshop. The instructors and other participants provided feedback on interactive prototypes.

I realized that my approach from responsive web design where one design worked reasonably well over several breakpoints didn't carry over well to apps. The change in form factor from iPhone to iPad makes for a big difference in user expectations about the interface and behavior.

I also realized that while its really tempting to rely on the latest interactions possible with both devices but they are not well known compared to standard click, selects and swipe actions in IOS.

It took some time to figure out the nature of the information being organized and what kind of organization made sense.

Information Architecture

I found that the best model for organizing the content was the Apple Music Iphone app. Both visual dictionaries and music libraries are complex databases that need to present a simple interface to users. The Music app is far from the best app out there but it's familiar to a wide age range of users .

Here word definitions are equivalent to songs, immutable predefined topics are albums, and user-defined topics are playlists.

Ubiquitous Iphone

People carry their phones everywhere. It is the dictionary, camera, and translator that's there when you need it. It can capture new words that encountered in everyday situations. It can offer lessons to pass time on a subway commute.

The splash screen presents the value proposition of personalized lessons based on topics that are relevant to the user.

The main exploration screen provides a choice between pre-defined vocabulary lists based on standard curriculums, popular topics, or user supplied words & characters.

The main screen leverages the ubiquity of phones in everyday life.

The premise is that a user can type, speak or photograph a word to find a match against an existing database. Allowing word input by photo-based OCR, microphone-based voice recognition in English or Chinese, or typing English, Pinyin or Chinese addresses the issue that learners are not necessarily proficient in Chinese character stroke input or Pinyin romanization.

Current translators from Baidu and Microsoft are able to translate a menu from photographs in 8 secs so what's proposed is feasible but requires substantial resources to achieve.

Figma Prototype

The latest version of the prototype is public. Please feel feel free to step through the embedded prototype and experience the screens.

Quality Matters

Researching competitor products I realized that there are qualitative aspects to learning materials that are hard to get user feedback on without a fully functional product.

We prototyped the key parts of our value proposition below but the true test is whether customers will stay with the product after using it for an extended period of time. Learning has its peaks and plateaus. A good tutor responds to the learner's energy.

Drill Quality

After pivoting from the initial Kanxi radicals direction the project did not dive too deeply into the drills themselves. There's a lot to be said for the quality of the lessons amongst the different apps I researched. It's hard to quantify difficulty in multiple choice between visual elements like characters. Word definitions can be easy, hard, or ambiguous. Tuning the frequency of old characters and the introduction of new ones as a learner progresses seems like an art. Tuning the variety of drill types is also an art although gamification metric like engagement offer good data.
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Image Design

‍The design of the images for each definition was lightly explored with simple black and white illustrations using humorous proportions. Images can convey a lot and the choice between photographs or illustration style can make a big difference in who the app appeals to.

An illustrated dictionary is a very resource intensive project. An app like this one has the same issues compounded by a form factor that requires legibility at thumbnail size.

Conclusion

The emphasis on speed and convenience point towards a convergence between having a tutor on your phone and a translator. So why bother learning a language when you can rely on the later?

Translation technology is getting faster but even 8 secs for a good translation is an eternity in some contexts.

Translation software relies on a database that's backward looking by almost by definition.

A language is complex body of evolving information and context. There are parts which are open and borrow from new sources especially in a transactional situation. There are other parts that are more secretive, closed to outsiders, and establish a community like teen slang. Some cultures have an appeal that makes learning their language rewarding to outsiders compared to other languages.

There's a lot of changing context that translation software has to keep up with.

Queries May Reveal Opportunities.

Learning a language is investment of time that only makes sense if there's a payoff. Since English is everywhere, a native English speaker has to be strongly motivated to learn another language.

What are those motivations? Is it a need that can be addressed by a profitable product or service? Maintaining and updating a language database is not trivial and only makes sense in a commercial context if there's a market. Much like search queries are understood to be the voice of consumers and translation queries reveal gaps in communication, tutorial requests may reveal areas of deep interest.

Using learners queries to inform edits can shorten the feedback loop for updates and keep the database current and relevant. The gap between what's already in the system and what users ask for present opportunities.