I did this UX design exercise as a practice about revamping Miriwoong app. Miriwoong, a language is categorised as critically endangered, with fewer than 12 truly fluent speakers remaining. Article: https://medium.com/p/9636de8b05a3

1. Miriwoong
Hello

2. About Me
Background of the person who did this
design exercise
30
Compiled the materials in this slide deck that I had
done for this design exercise
Slides
03
Edits

3. About Me
Amy Cheong
Technical
- Software engineering
- Cloud computing
UX certification
Speaks multiple languages
- Mandarin
- Malays
- English
- Cantonese
- Korean
- Spanish (learning)
Related project:
Designed language podcast app

4. Design Process
07
Carried out for this design exercise
Procedures

5. Mon
Defined user needs, user goal,
assumptions, constraints
Identified all the requirements.
Design Process
App Review
Understood the core concept and
the functionalities of the existing
app.
Created story tasks and observed
users’ behaviours.
Understand Miriwoong and
created persona
Understood Miriwoong culture,
community and language and
determined who is the app for.
Competitive research on
existing language learning
apps
Studied the current existing
learning flows in mobile.
Revised Information
architecture and user flows
Wireframe
Drafted out low prototype on
paper and transformed in Sketch
after a few iterations
Compiled materials
Documented all the materials to
explain the design process and
concept.
Most of my notes can be viewed here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OsUwcgCNz6UNP58Fy9tNob6spAk0-caqm2fdOBr44Us/edit?usp=sharing

6. Define
Design process
User needs
➔ Preserve endangered
Miriwoong heritage by
educating the public to
Miriwoong language
User Goal
➔ Learn Miriwoong language
effectively
Assumptions
➔ Assume that user likes to
know their learning progress
by tracking their scorings
➔ Assume that user uses app at
some fixed timings
Eg. commutes time
➔ Assume that user learns
better in smaller content size
➔ Assume that user relies the
app to learn the basics only
Constraints
➔ Design for native app
➔ Limited to internet access
hence need to have
◆ offline support
◆ syncing mechanism

7. Design Process - Challenge Statement
How might we
leverage Miriwoong language in an
everyday digital language learning app?

8. t
App Review
Navigating around the app
iOS App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/miriwoong/id994029653
05
Most of them learned 1 or 2
foreign languages
Language learners
Interviewed
04
Carried out think out loud
when they were navigating
the app
Tasks to be carried out
04
Impressions and pain
points about the app
Main common observations
and comments

9. UI block for content
downloading
App Review
“Wait what? I need to stuck here
waiting for the downloading?”
All of the users complained about the waiting time up to 5-10
seconds when they installed the app
“Is there really any new content
every time I open the app?”
The constant blocking at splash screen left a bad
impression to the users. They were getting more and more
impatient for the wait.

10. Confusing main sections
App Review
“Should I ‘explore’ or ‘learn’ first?”
Some of the users were unsure where should they start from
when they were requested to learn 5 new Miriwoong words.
“It’s like a common phrases
inception”
Users found that the screens are the similar even though
they were in different sections. Some of the users forgot
which sections they were in when they navigated in and out
of the sections. Common phrases were repeated in 3 places
and users wondered what’s the purpose of it.

11. Gamification model
App review
“This is quite difficult to play”
There was no progress bar to indicate the game progress
and only 1 user made it to the end of game (of that section)
after a long time tryings.
If user answers questions wrongly three times, user is exited
from the game. This does not encourage user in learning
Miriwoong.

12. Long and unintuitive
copytext
App review
“I wish I know this from the other
page”
½ users made the effort of browsing the subsections and
scanned the content. Most of them commented on the long
texts and some wished that the useful explanations should
have been displayed more intuitively in visual on the
respective pages.
Example: ‘Also’ in the word detail page represents feminine
or other different spellings for the same meaning of word.

13. Workshop
Three day on-site workshop was held with key stakeholders to
come to a common understanding of the problem, reach
alignment on vision for the solution, and begin prioritizing the
challenges to address.
User Interviews
Interviews were conducted with internal users and onsite
visits were conducted with customers to uncover pain points,
workflows, workarounds, and opportunities. By speaking with
users, we were able to more deeply understand what should
form the basis of the solution.
Roadmap Planning
Based on learnings about the business and its goals, we
outlined a high-level plan for executing the solution. To
support ongoing efforts and allow for responsiveness to
learnings, the approach is to release in iterations.
Questions
that I want
to answer
After app review
App Review
How can I simplify the current information
architecture?
What’re the learning mechanism in existing
digital solutions?
How can I create a language learning app
that relates to Miriwoong?
How to improve the current mobile
experience?

14. t
The User
Context, archetypes and
characteristics of the users and the
journeys and behaviours they follow.
iOS App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/miriwoong/id994029653
04
Since this was a design exercise, I analysed
potential users who were associated with
Miriwoong through blog, Twitter and
LinkedIn
References on the users who involve in
preserving Miriwoong language

15. Workshop
Three day on-site workshop was held with key stakeholders to
come to a common understanding of the problem, reach
alignment on vision for the solution, and begin prioritizing the
challenges to address.
User Interviews
Interviews were conducted with internal users and onsite
visits were conducted with customers to uncover pain points,
workflows, workarounds, and opportunities. By speaking with
users, we were able to more deeply understand what should
form the basis of the solution.
Roadmap Planning
Based on learnings about the business and its goals, we
outlined a high-level plan for executing the solution. To
support ongoing efforts and allow for responsiveness to
learnings, the approach is to release in iterations.
Amanda
The Volunteer
The User
A volunteer who is working at Mirima Dawang
Woorlab-gerring(MDWg), an organisation dedicated
to revitalising language and culture of Miriwoong
people.
Background
Miriwoong app will allow Amanda to...
➔ Learn Miriwoong words at the beginning so that she
can adapt into the community to preserve the
language
➔ To share, explain and introduce Miriwoong language
to non-indigenous people easily
➔ Translate Miriwoong language into documentation
➔ Ensure learning is bi-directional: teach Miriwoong
and encourage the language to be passed onto
future generation
Her works

16. The Research
How do I find out what we found out?

17. The Research
Current Information Architecture
How can I simplify the
current information
architecture?
Orange box: The area that I would
like to focus in this design
exercise

18. The Research
Revised Information Architecture
Combine similar content
Remove unnecessary content
➔ Explore, Learn and Common
Phrases are similar
➔ Search is unnecessary to be at
every pages and should be
placed under dictionary
➔ There are too many subsections
under About (Renamed to
Settings) that can be omitted
➔ Common phrases
How can I simplify the current
information architecture?

19. Competitive
Research
How others assess these similar
challenges?
03
Learn language in a long
period from the basics
Educational
Language learning apps
03
Faster track in learning
words or phrases in a short
amount of time
Travel
Language learning apps
02
In terms of their learning
mechanism and engagement model
Top researches

20. The Research
Duolingo
➔ Does not emphasize on vocabulary
➔ Introduce common sentences without detail
explanation.
➔ There’s no word list. Words are introduced in
the exercise along the way.
➔ Point system in exercise. User need to score to
complete the exercise.
➔ Provides listening, reading, speaking and
writing
➔ Practices conversation with chatbot
Memrise
➔ Use “spaced repetition” and focus on
vocabulary
➔ Each phrase has 5 states. Everytime user
answers correctly to that phrase, the state of
the phrase “evolved”.
➔ Each level’s word list is separated in parts and
user has to finish all the parts gradually
➔ Practices conversation with chatbot
➔ The content is based on the common daily day
usage and practicality
What’re the learning mechanism in
existing digital solutions?
Content structure and engagement model

21. Mobile App Experience
How can we improve?
The Research
Background
download & loading
Any loading indicator should not block user
interactions. App content should be
downloaded at the background to avoid
any disruption.
Native App
Current app uses Phonegap framework
which never really produce high-quality as
the native app. Scrollings and selections in
current app are often ignored and full of
glitches.
We can use iOS animation to engage users
and this might not be achievable in
Phonegap.
Widget & Notification
Widget: User is able to have a fast glance to
learn Word of the day conveniently
Notification: Remind user to learn at certain
timing

22. User Flows
The Research

23. Wireframe
04
Features that help in
Miriwoong language
learning
Features
02
Tested with 3 language
learners
Iterations
07
In terms of their learning
mechanism and engagement model
Screens

24. Learn - Study words
Wireframe
Tested well
➔ Prefer the new level content arrangement (smaller
chunks and able to remember words gradually)
➔ Like progress bar to show where do the user left off
last time
Tweaked
➔ Removed learning history graph as most of the
users do not see it as useful
➔ Added filter on level list so that users do not need to
scroll to the bottom to resume everytime
Considerations
➔ Word highlight seemed to be different in example
sentence. Users might not what’s the logic behind
the change (this might result from tenses, feminine
etc)

25. Learn -Exercise
Wireframe
Tested well
➔ Questions format are quite intuitive to understand
➔ Correct answer is displayed straight after user
answers a question wrongly
Tweaked
➔ Custom keyboard so that they do not need to
change their native keyboard
➔ Added incorrect answer to compare what did user
do wrong previously

26. Word of the day
Wireframe
Tested well
➔ Easier access (removed few clicks)
➔ Will try to remember if they come across this
Considerations
➔ Worry that the notifications might be ‘too much’,
prefer to be able to choose ON/OFF at specific time
(1 outlier)

27. How much time do you have?
Stretch goal
Wireframe
➔ Study duration
Users are free to choose the study duration that they want
➔ Study reminder
To remind user to study
- At certain time
- At a location
User is commuting
Trigger
User wants to learn
in a fixed amount of
time
Learn
App articulates content
for user to learn based
on estimated time on
their remaining levels
App

28. How much time do you have?
Stretch goal
Wireframe
Tested well
➔ Sounds interesting and willing to try
Considerations
➔ Wondering how frequent this feature will be used.
50: 50 of the users think they will use this for their
commute time or waiting time.

29. How does this app relates to
Miriwoong?
Wireframe
A visual language buddy
➔ Incorporates Miriwoong language in
conversational copy texts that enables
user to learn Miriwoong subconsciously
➔ Use to:
- remind user to learn at a specific time
- encourage user when they answer
correctly/wrongly
**Note: This might not be culturally accepted. If it’s not, I would like to interview product
owner to explore what’s Miriwoong iconic subject for replacement if inappropriate.
When user opens the app for the first time

30. Thank you
OfficethatIhaveworkedin:
Singapore-HongKong
London-Sydney
Medium blog: @amycheong
LinkedIn: amycheong19
Twitter: amycheong19
Website: amycheong19.com
Email: amycheong19@gmail.com
Amy Cheong