Age of Learning
& Tencent
In 2018, Age of Learning partnered with Tencent to launch the English Language Learning program in China. Tencent is a multinational technology conglomerate holding company valued at US$500 billion. Its leading social network servers more than 1 billion monthly active users.
Tencent ABCmouse
Tencent ABCmouse is an English language teaching app for children in China, ages 2-8. The app was released on April 4th, 2018. Now the app has around 230K DAU, a 4.8 out of 5.0 score from 19.6K user ratings in the China Mac App Store.
Role & Duration
Product designer
2019 - 2020
Deliverables
Discovery
Mid-fidelity wireframes
Prototypes
Platform
Phone - iOS / Android
The Lesson Report Project
After users link their children's' ID to Wechat, ABCmouse will begin sending Lesson Report notifications to parents. Through Lesson Report, parents can follow their children's learning progress.
Business Goals
The short term goal is to generate organic users, and lower cost per sale. The long term goal is to improve curriculum success.
The Challenge
The main challenge of the project is to identify the pain points. We wanted to increase Lesson Report usage (increase average percentage of clicks) and generate organic users (increase average percentage of shares).
< 20%
Average Percentage of clicks per day
< 40%
Average Percentage of shares per day
Design Process
Research
Define
User Flow
Wireframe
Visual Design
Release
In the Tencent ABCmouse app, much of the content is specific for parents. Our main objective during the discovery phase was to identify the existing functions' problems related to business goals. I conducted several stakeholder interviews in order to understand their expectations. After that, I virtually interviewed 5 existing users in China about our product.
"
I want to know my kid's learning progress. But I am so busy everyday. It would be great if the progress was sent to me when I needed to see it. And it would be even more helpful if I could get some feedback from a real teacher based on my kid's performance. - Yunhan Zhang, mother of 6-year-old user "
Persona
Based on interviews with parents and user feedback from teachers, I planned a working session with my team, and created a persona. It represents a typical user, including basic background information, characteristics, motivation, goals, needs, habits, influence groups, and daily used apps. This will help the team see users with empathy and apply customer-oriented thinking.
By adopting a persona in combination with business goals, improving Lesson Report will serve our goals and satisfy parents' needs. In order to prove this hypothesis, I practiced heuristic markup for the existing Lesson Report. I discussed my hypothesis with stakeholders and the Tencent team. Both stakeholders and the Tencent team agreed with the direction, and provided more feedback.
Pain Points
Since Lesson Report has already been in use, any changes could influence the existing users. Any changes had to address user pain points. We conducted short phone interviews for 6 parents and 6 Tencent ABCmouse teachers. We organized the user feedback and data. We ultimately defined 4 main pain points.
1. Official account constraint
Lesson Report notifications were sent via Tencent ABCmouse's official Wechat account. Visual elements could not be embedded in notifications.
2. Frequency
The daily Lesson Report notifications are too frequent. Most users ignore them.
3. Content value
The default Lesson Report layout is the same for all users. One of the business goals was to personalize the Lesson Report to customize it for each individual user.
4. Share
The only allowed action on the notification is to click on the Details button. The notification should provide more opportunities for users to share their children's learning progress.
Collaboration
After the pain points were laid out, the object was to find an intuitive way for users to utilize Lesson Report. I wanted to give users real value, so they would monitor progress and share results. I conducted multiple meetings with VPs, stakeholders, curriculum, Tencent PM and programmers to realign the overall business scope. Then I led experience workshops to brainstorm design ideas and optimize user experience focusing on solving the pain points.
Solutions for Pain Points:
1. Official account constraint
Programmers brainstormed different solutions, and finally agreed to switch the system from the Tencent ABCmouse official Wechat account to a mini program. This gave the design team a lot of freedom to create visual content.
2. Frequency
Based on the data of per day/per week user activity rate and user interviews, we all agreed to send weekly reports for the first MVP, instead of daily reports.
3. Content Value
Because of the constraints of curriculum and data resources, fully personalized feedback had to wait for the following MVP. But the team devised a temporary solution. We built a feedback database for different levels, and let the computer randomly pick based on users' performance.
4. Share
In order to increase opportunities for users to share their reports, we will implement a badge system to encourage user sharing.
User Flow
It is important to understand how parents use Lesson Report from beginning to end, and how they revisit it. This will help us understand users' behaviors when they use Lesson Report.
Wireframes
The wireframe stage was built upon communication and iteration. I asked some Chinese parents in America to try the app and reviewed their feedback. I obtained similar feedback from parents in China. During the process, I also kept the business direction in mind. After few days of iterating, I was able to map out a direction forward.
Visual Design
At the end, I had meeting with the Tencent product manager and the UI team. We went through the requirements of the functions, user flow and wireframes. Then, the Tencent UI team worked on design, which adapted to the latest product style.
Experimentation
This prototype was an experimentation which I created it in my spare time. When I shared it with my team and the curriculum team, they all thought it could help them visualize a possible future lesson report. It also inspired curriculum content.
MVP Release
Overall, the optimization for Lesson Report was a success. We increased the paid users' usage rate and sharing rate significantly.
Over a period of 2 months after release
11%
Average of clicks per day increased by 11%
25%
Averages shares per day
increased by 25%
Final thoughts:
1. Programmers have many technical solutions which can serve the product's goal. It is beneficial to communicate with programmers on a regular basis.
2. The scope of the project, as outlined by the VP, was overly ambitious. When presented with unrealistic expectations, designers must voice concern backed up with data, so that alternative solutions can be considered.