In the 2nd semester, pre-MDM students worked on two projects: an ESL app (English as a Second Language) for 2-4-year-old toddlers and digital solution to learn Calligraphy. In this article, the team leaders talk ‘about the projects’ and their ‘experiences throughout the process’.
1. Stanly Jeong: Team lead of “Lingo Pals”
How can two-to-four-year-old children enjoyably learn English using digital devices during this challenging situation? That was the essential question that my team was confronted with at first.
Before I start, let me introduce my team ‘Lingo pals’ first. We were a team of four. Armaghan and Simran are seasoned content designers, so they mostly worked on how the audiences experience our product. Ying is a talented UI artist and she also contributed to building our engaging interactive app. I, Stanley, was a project manager throughout the process, and I also drew storyboards and characters.
We started by researching articles, markets, competitors, and, most importantly, our target audiences. What we discovered from the whole process was that children are lonely since they cannot play with their friends, at the moment. In addition to it, they quickly lose focus when the contents are boring or push knowledge acquisition without creating interpersonal rapport. Lastly, their parents are also struggling in the pandemic, so we need to ensure that children can play with our app independently, as well.
Our first formula was storytelling to build rapport with children at first. We introduced the alien Chingu. His primary motivation on Earth is seeking the components of his broken spaceship. Children can search five map locations and find parts to combine and fix Chingu’s spaceship. For instance, while searching the farmers’ market, children can learn the name of fruits and vegetables with Chingu. Children can learn while exploring the zoo, dance class, even the streets.
Moreover, we applied a variety of UX design methodologies. One of the most intriguing methods was the user interview. Our team used Google Forms as our primary method since we could not conduct in-person interviews for now. However, the result presented critical findings from the audience’s perspective. For example, we used the term ‘reward’ to clarify our reward system; however, children could not understand the meaning of the word and this created confusion.
2. Chelsea Wei: Team lead of “Kid Entertainers”
Learning English with Milk and Sugar represents our storytelling experience in the course, best wishes to our dearest Aida and can’t wait to see her in the upcoming fall term. Two animal characters – Cat Milk and Dog Sugar are a symbol of warmth and courage, respectively, who help toddlers and parents to study common exception words with a scaffolded difficulty level. We applied design thinking and user-centred design methods to implement the project simulation with an interesting narrative and a cast of adorable friends.
Briefly, the storyline goes as follows: Milk and Sugar are passing by a grocery store, and they decide to go inside to buy stuff for Flamingo Honey’s surprising birthday party on September 1st. “A surprise party” – the 1st book name consists of 5 chapters, including tasty food, colourful balloons, healthy fruit, friendly animals and means of transportation. Each chapter features 12 commonly used words, an English Song and (at least) a review game in which a co-op mode with parents is optional for playing. Our pure intention was to assist ESL parents to teach kids during these challenging times.
In terms of implications, this project offered a brand-new learning format – a workshop style to study in a Canadian academic institution. In order to maintain my team’s high efficiency with collaborating remotely, the most important thing was to clarify how the workload could be divided synchronously or asynchronously to save time for all the members.
Under the specific context, I thought and implemented in English all along associated with product management. Hence, I have become more confident in future digital projects.
3. Bin Tong: Team lead of “Callipa”
Callipa is a project simulation that I led during the preMDM program. Team Callipa consists of four talents behind the scenes, Armaghan as our visual designer and Persian culture advisor, Ying as our UX designer, Chelsea as our UX researcher, and me as the product manager.
The product is an online mobile community for Persian calligraphers to get inspired, connected and recognized. Due to Covid-19, we learned that Persian calligraphers including teachers and students were feeling isolated because all the in-person activities were temporarily canceled. That was why we wanted to create such an inclusive community that any Persian calligraphers can join, regardless of level.
The idea of the product came originally from our client who had been in Persian calligraphy business for decades. After a semi-structured interview, we realized the problem that stay-at-home students and other calligraphers were facing, and gradually formed the concept of Callipa app. To identify the problem better, we conducted several competitive research analyses and three user interviews before delivering the mock-ups. All the empirical data we collected guided us to build the product with a problem-solving mindset, and of course we did not just stop there. Before the final design, we created an interactive prototype that users could play with on their phones, and get more feedback from them, so that we can make Callipa a better app.
4. Kennedy Kan: Team lead of “Let’s Link Your Inner Artist”
VR Calligraphy project simulation product “Let’s Link Your Inner Artist” has brought us a lot of joy throughout this semester. This project built by me (project manager) and my excellent two teammates: Simranjot Singh as product researcher and Stanly Jeong as a product designer. Our creation was originally inspired by one of our student’s fathers, who is a Persian calligrapher. But since our idea has a huge potential to benefit a wide range of target audiences, and shouldn’t be just limited to one cultural preference, we decided to expand it.
Good teamwork and management skills for an asynchronous workflow are the biggest takeaways that I have learned from this experience, so far. Different time zones have made the situation challenging for our team, while setting up any meetings or assigning new tasks. However, good communication has helped us a lot while working asynchronously. No doubt, after our weekly presentations we felt empowered and happy to deliver one more step in the process. We have all been encouraged and have achieved a much clearer mindset for our ideation every time we considered the valuable feedback from listeners and users.