Courses

MEMRISE - LANGUAGE-LEARNING APP

Through videos, practical phrases, gamified tests and immersive experiences, Memrise teaches people to speak a language like the locals. The spaced repetition algorithm presents new words to the user and then tests them at optimally timed intervals.

  • Goals

    Produce a proposal for a new way of structuring the course content, defining the underlying Information Architecture and the user needs it would address..

  • My role

    UX Designer for Content. I was embedded in the Content Team and worked closely with the Head of Content and the Head of Design. I was responsible for producing the Content Object Model, leading the research project (through Competitor Analysis, User Interviews and Surveys), and mentoring content creators on design processes and guidelines.

  • Tools and Platforms

    Surveys were carried out via Survey Monkey and results analysed in Google sheets. Main software used for diagrams and flows was draw.io. Google docs were used for documentation. Sketches were created using Sketch.

    This was an Information Architecture project.

The problems

Business Problem

The company needed a way to create a less linear content structure in order to be able to experiment with it and adapt it to the user's needs and goals.

By changing the content structure to something that was not as linear and unidimensional, we would achieve a faster and more efficient way of testing, changing, and delivering our content.

User Problem

Our users needed a way to experience content that adapted to their needs and abilities because they wanted to feel they were meaningfully working towards their goals.

By giving our users the possibility to choose the content they experienced, they would achieve a more rewarding learning experience.

Understand

I conducted a Competitor Analysis to understand what other products were offering. I then ran User Interviews and Contextual Inquiries to identify

  • The criteria that guided the kind of content language learners consumed and how they consumed it

  • Similarities and differences in how our Personas’ goals and motivations guided their in-app behaviours and choices

In order to validate the insights that I drew from the interviews with a larger sample, I created and sent out a survey.

Define

The goal was to create an IA Model which would underpin the creation of content that was

  • Tailored to the learner’s experience and goals

  • Associated with attributes and metadata

  • Fed into new functionalities and ways of delivery

  • Refreshed without causing disruptions to the user progress

The main challenge I came across was dealing with the linearity of the existing learning journey, which meant redesigning the whole structure of our courses.

“I hate having to go through the early stages before getting to the first words I find useful.”

— Participant

Ideate

I started sketching a proposal for a new content structure and met with several stakeholders (including other designers, PMs, and developers) to get their input and secure their buy-in. With my proposal I was tackling, amongst others, issues like

  • The apparent limited availability of the course content

  • The linearity of the user journey

  • The missing link between the level a user is learning and its relevance to their goals

Learnings and considerations

I outlined a few quick wins that I had identified. For instance, we could improve the discoverability of an existing feature that allows users to skip words they already know and arrange the levels in the course page horizontally rather than vertically. I found it useful to highlight these easier-to-implement suggestions to my stakeholders, especially when I was proposing such a big change: it reassured them we could start moving towards the bigger goal just by making a few little steps.

Another method I used to get their buy-in was to propose a prioritised list of issues that needed tackling (I used ‘Now, Then, Later’) that we could use as a starting point in our future scoping meetings.

My proposal was used to update the content offering in the app and allowed content creators to release courses more quickly and the business to diversify its offering.