Natalia Caballero

JapanGo!

A gamified online adventure for studying Japanese.

How we provide a motivating, encouraging, and comfortable journey for online Japanese learners.

The solution

The challenge

People find it difficult to get into the habit of studying, which leads to a loss of momentum and motivation, followed by giving up.

They turn to the Internet to look for different learning solutions, but because it is a very specific language, the resources available on the market

do not offer a complete, unified, and reliable solution and, in many cases, do not even have a specific and didactic journey, causing the user to waste a lot of time looking for alternatives and falling into a spiral of low self-esteem and lack of confidence in their learning ability.

“How could we offer favorable conditions for online Japanese language study, with practical methods that encourage students and keep them motivated, encouraged, and feeling rewarded in their learning journey?”

JAPANGO - A gamified online adventure in the Japanese language.

With JAPANGO, students can easily start learning, discover new opportunities, and practice daily—all in one place. They can also set up their study and revision decks, read material from reliable sources, and join a welcoming community ready to help them every step of the way, from the beginning of the course to its completion—as the platform will remain available to former students.

Test the prototype by clicking here

Preliminary research

The current scenario

In recent years, interest in studying Japanese has grown considerably around the world. According to data from the Japan Foundation in 2018, approximately 3.8 million people were studying the language worldwide, an increase of 5.4% over the previous year (2015).

Many people struggle to find affordable resources for learning a language. Books and face-to-face classes can be expensive and inaccessible for many students, while online options often lack reliability, appropriate teaching methods, or promises of rapid learning, which can lead to doubts, lack of motivation, and the need to search again for the ideal course.

Another important factor is the increase in distance learning enrollment caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has made online studies an economical and high-impact option.

It was in this context that the idea arose to create an online Japanese language learning platform to meet the high demand from students around the world, taking advantage of the growing popularity of distance learning. The platform should be accessible to a diverse audience, including students with different proficiency levels and special needs, such as visual or hearing impairments. Through effective UX design, the platform can democratize access to language learning, allowing more people to access this fascinating and enriching language.

Process development

Design thinking is based on a user-centered design approach, seeking to understand users' needs and pain points. That is why we carry out our work based on its three stages and sub-stages.

Value proposition

Learn Japanese in short lessons, with the help of various resources such as flashcards, in a gamified environment with cultural immersion, which will make learning fun, easy, and dynamic.

First phase: Empathy

To understand the real problem and the struggles of Japanese students, we conducted exploratory research to verify the context and generative research to deepen and generate insights. As a way to organize and map the steps involved, we used the following roadmap:

CSD Matrix

We use the CSD Matrix as a mechanism to define and identify important information to be discovered, validated, or invalidated.

Online Questionnaire

The questionnaire was answered by **41 people**, and the results are presented below:

Other specific steps were:

Research plan

Desk research

Comparative evaluation

Diary of Japanese students' habits over a week

Quantitative research

Second phase: Definition

Persona

Based on the results obtained and with the central objective of recognizing and understanding students' needs in order to make good design decisions, we developed two variants of the persona.

User journey

Although our research findings presented two personas, we were able to identify that the pains, processes, and feelings of both were the same. Based on this information, we put together the user journey map below:

Third phase: Ideation

Before we actually started thinking about solutions, we held a meeting to gather insights on items that could add value to the platform based on the pain points reported by users in the survey.

The low-effort, high-impact points were the ones we worked on in the next stages of the project.

For the criteria, we talked to a developer about the difficulties of implementing the solutions. We discussed with him what would require more effort due to the difficulty of doing so, and the impact was directly related to solving the user's biggest pain points first.

Impact x Effort Matrix

Fourth and fifth phases: Prototype and testing

The paper prototype was created using the crazy 8s technique. Then the best ideas from each person in the group were put together and we created a flow.

Low-fidelity prototype - Creating the paper prototype

The low-fidelity prototype was tested by nine people, and eight were indirectly successful in finding the lesson on the platform. Another task requested was the flashcard system, but we considered it inconclusive and tried to test it again in the medium-fidelity prototype.