I am designing a language learning application to familiarize myself better with the design thinking process. I performed a competitive analysis of current language learning applications and what they offer. After getting a comprehensive lay of the (language-learning app) land, I conducted user interviews with my target audience to gauge what needs were and weren’t being met. Additionally, I asked them what their daily life was like, how much time they wanted to dedicate to learning, and what their goals were. Through both of these steps, I could better identify where these current applications could be improved. I felt like I knew what to design for and plan to build.
By the time I put my pen to paper (and spent no small amount of time doodling and warming up), the ideas were flowing. I took some time to create ideal user flows to create a guidepost for myself. A user flow is a prototypical user’s path to accomplish a specific task. In it, I defined their entry point and what a successful outcome would be for a given task. An example of one of these might look like: adding a new word or phrase to their study collection.
Still, something felt wrong. I had a multitude of ideas but lacked priority and direction. I pushed through the feeling for a time as I sketched these wireframes and user flows. Then, I read about user research principles and asked for some advice from industry professionals. After these readings and conversations, something clicked. I realized that even though I spent time gathering data from my early user research, I could have more effectively organized it to make it actionable for myself as a designer.
Following my advice, I took some time to revisit my interview data and craft an empathy map from it (above). An empathy map is a simple visual that captures knowledge about a user’s behaviors and attitudes. This empathy map helped me identify my users’ thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. From this time taken to re-organize my data, I could identify the fundamental challenges my users were facing. This gave me the direction to start designing with clear priorities of importance.
What is my biggest takeaway from this, you ask?
In revisiting my data, I realized that I needed to dedicate more time to my information architecture in the initial research phase. Information architecture is the organization, structure, and labeling of content (or data) to be effective and sustainable. In my hurry to begin wireframing, I cut short a vital part of the design process. In my next project, I will dedicate a lot more time to the data collection process of user research and the organization of that data.