Client Open English
Role Interaction Design Lead / Project Lead
Additional credits Mehera O'Brian, Andi Cheung, Dever Thomas
_____________________________________________________________________
Open English is an online platform that helps users learn to speak English fluently. The platform connects students (mostly in Latin America) to native English-speaking teachers and guides them through a curriculum of multimedia content. Open English partnered with Method to create the next generation of their language-learning platform.
Our core challenge was to create an experience that kept users engaged and motivated through a program that might take more than a year to complete. We also wanted to foster a feeling of being part of an learning community. We began by identifying key user needs throughout the learning lifecycle and analyzed best practices in analogous digital experiences. We developed a set of strategies that framed the experience goals and articulated the core design principles—Human, Fun, Achievable.
To keep users motivated, we designed a dashboard experience that pushed "study bundles" of content to users in small, easily digestible units that helps create a sense of achievement and allows users to orient themselves through the various levels of the program. We also incorporated a rewards system of points and badges in order to provide frequent incentives.
Our process was extremely collaborative with multiple work sessions, including paper prototyping and co-creation sessions with stakeholders and their education specialists. Solutions were iterative validated against known pain points with users through review sessions with customer service and support teams. (Access to students was prohibitive due to time and budget.)
Using our designs and strategies as a core part of their new offering, Open English recently raised $43 million in venture capital.