World Chat Mobile App
World Chat is a multilingual messenger app that automatically translates messages into your chosen language.
It was originally thought of to help children of immigrants who are not fluent in their native language, communicate better with their families, so that they can build deeper relationships with them. After conducting some user research, I was surprised to find many more use cases for the product.
Role: UX Researcher, UI/UX Designer
My Responsibilities:
This was a research heavy personal project I conducted out of curiosity to solve a problem I experienced first hand. I conducted user interviews, affinity maps, planned out user flows, personas, MosCOW maps, created lo-fi wireframes, and facilitated usability tests.
How might I figure out who/what my product’s target users, use cases, and MVP features are?
The goal was to fully explore what user research methods I could use to solve this problem.
The project took 2 weeks to complete.
I conducted 5 user interviews, 30-45 mins each. Then I compiled the data in an affinity map and looked for similar problems that these users faced. From these problems I created the user personas which gave me insights on how they would interact with the product. I then used those problems to brainstorm features and conducted a MoSCoW map to prioritize those features. From there I designed lo-fi wireframe sketches to get a better visual of the features and built out user flows for the different user personas. I then conducted 2 5-second usability tests to see if users understood how to use the product.
I conducted 5 interviews, 30-45 mins each, over video calls with potential users in New York, who come from multilingual families or communities.
The main questions I wanted answered were :
Who are my potential users?
What use cases are there for this product?
TRANSCRIPT
Hi [name]. Thank you so much for meeting with me today I really appreciate you. I am building a messaging app that automatically translates any conversation a user is having into their native language, which they can set and easily change. This way users can text in their own language or languages and still communicate clearly with someone who speaks a different language from them.
Since this product is still in the works there is a lot of room for improvement which is why I called you today to get your honest feedback on it. Do you have any questions before we get started?
Customer Intro Questions:
First I’d like to know a little more about you and how you communicate with those around you.
1. How many languages do you speak? What are they? Which are you most comfortable with?
2. Are there people in your life that speak your family’s native language? Who are they?
3. Are there people in your life that speak languages other than your native tongue? Who are they?
4. On a scale of 1-5 how often do you communicate with people in another language in a week? (1 being not often, 5 is very often)
5. Do you speak with them in their native language?
6. With what medium do you use to communicate with them? (Through text, email, phone, or in-person)
6. On a scale of 1-5 how easy or difficult is it to communicate with them in person? (1 being very easy, 5 being very difficult)
7. On a scale of 1-5 how easy or difficult is it to communicate with them through text? (1 being very easy, 5 being very difficult)
8. If you could read, write, speak in their language fluently, how often would you communicate through text? (1 not very often, 5 very often)
9. Would it be more or less than you are now?
More Specific Questions
1. Tell me about the last time you spoke to [people they mentioned they speak to in first section] through text.
2. What was the hardest part?
3. Did you have to come up with a workaround for this? How did you deal with the problem?
4. What products/tools have you used to talk to someone who wasn’t fluent in your language?
5. On a scale of 1-5 how easy or difficult was it to use those tools? (1 being very easy, 5 being very difficult)
6. What do you think those tools did well?
7. What do you think they could do better?
Blind Product Survey Questions
So I’d like to ask you a few questions about an app concept I have. It is a messaging app that can automatically translate any conversation you’re having with another person who is texting in a different language into your native language, which you can set and change at any time.
The goal is to allow users to text in their own language and still communicate complicated thoughts to someone who speaks a completely different language from them.
First, do you have any questions about how this app would function? Feel free to ask me now before you start on the questions below.
1. On a scale of 1-5 how likely would you use this product? (1 being never, 5 being every day).
2. On a scale of 1-5 how likely would you recommend this product? (1 being not likely, 5 very likely).
3. How do you think this product can be used?
4. Is there any feedback you’d like to share with our team about this app concept?
I was surprised to find a lot more use cases than I originally thought of including familial, professional, educational, and tourism.
I organized all the data collected from my research and created an Affinity Map to organize the information and get a better picture of user problems, potential features, and possible personas.
From the most popular use cases and user problems, I created four user personas.
Jasmine (1st Generation )
Jasmine is the daughter of immigrants. She speaks fluent English but has only conversational-level speaking skills in her family’s native language, Arabic. She cannot discuss complex issues with her parents and usually reverts to a combination of Arabic and English to communicate.
Age: 26
Occupation: Creative Director
Status: Engaged
Location: New York, NY
Traits: Family-oriented, Foodie
Tech Habits: Actively texting people throughout the day. Spends a good amount of time on Instagram scrolling through food pics and posting her own.
Goals:
To communicate with her family better when not face to face.
Learn more about her own culture by learning Arabic.
Challenges:
Learning Arabic is extremely difficult.
Motivations:
To develop a deeper relationship with her relatives who do not speak English.
Fears:
Won’t be able to help her parents with important legal and financial issues if she cannot communicate with them properly about complex subjects.
Breonna (The Student)
Breonna loves to travel and learn about different cultures. She has friends from all over the world and does her best to keep in touch with them all. She has a hard time getting to know them on a more personal level because of the language barrier.
Age: 28
Occupation: Freelance Videographer
Status: Single
Location: Nomadic
Traits: Loves learning new things, Risk Taker
Tech Habits: She only uses her phone for when she’s posting on Instagram or texting.
Goals:
To learn the basics of different languages faster by texting people in their language.
To stay connected and create deeper relationships with the people she meets when she travels.
Challenges:
She travels to different countries so often it’s difficult to learn all of their languages.
Motivations:
By connecting with people from her travels she’ll be able to stay in touch and build more valuable relationships.
She can also learn more about the culture of the places she visits if she understands the language.
Fears:
All her travels will be for nothing if she doesn’t keep in touch with the amazing people she’s met or learned from her adventures.
Theo (The Professional)
Theo is a professional who works with a diverse group of clients, many who’s first languages are not English. He is serious about creating a close connection with his clients and is looking for a way to communicate with them better in their language.
Age: 35
Occupation: Business Consultant
Status: Single
Location: Austin, TX
Traits: Early Adopter, Work-oriented
Tech Habits: Uses his phone all day for work and personal. Productivity nerd. Follows thought leaders and entrepreneurs. Very active on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Goals:
To better communicate with his clients.
Challenges:
His clients speak all different languages, he can’t possibly learn them all.
Motivations:
To provide a better service to his clients and help them build more successful businesses.
Fears:
Will fail to connect with his clients in their language and look foolish trying.
Mary (The Non-Native English Speaker)
Mary immigrated to the US and raised her family here. She was never learned how to speak, read, or write English fluently and has a hard time communicating with the younger generation in her family.
Age: 78
Occupation: Retired
Status: Married
Location: Queens, NY
Traits: Hesitant in trying new things especially with technology.
Tech Habits: Unskilled. She only uses her phone to call family and friends.
Goals:
To find a way to communicate with members of the family that do not speak her language.
Challenges:
She struggles to communicate with her grandchildren who are not fluent in her native language.
Her regional accent makes her hard to understand.
Motivations:
To have a relationship with her grandchildren.
Fears:
To become isolated from her family due to the growing language barrier between generations.
I conducted a feature brainstorm session and drew up a MoSCoW Map to prioritize features.
I decided that for an MVP product what I needed to focus on were basic chat functions and the features that set the app apart from other messaging apps such as the translation toggle, auto-translate, and language setting features.
Lo-fi Wireframes & User flows
I drew up wireframes on Adobe XD in order to build a prototype for usability tests to see if the features made sense to users. I also mapped out the user flow in Miro so that I could better understand how a user should navigate through the app.
The project was a success! I was able to figure out who my users were, what use cases there were for the app, and what the MVP features would be.
My only constraint was not being able to conduct more usability tests due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was only able to conduct 2 5-second usability tests, one with my partner who lived with me and the other with a friend who lived close by. The prototype was created with Marvel. During the usability test with my friend, we socially distanced, wore masks, and I just asked for his first impressions on the app — what he thought it’s function was, who the product was for, and what steps he would take to send a message. The product function and audience were clear and there were no failures in the action steps.
I learned that research will bring out surprising problems and potential opportunities that I may not have considered before.
I discovered through my conversation with Kesang that Tibetan was an underserved language in the tech world and literacy in the community is slowly declining. With an auto-translation app, the language could be taught to new generations and revived slowly through technology. This was a very cool insight into another culture’s problems and how an app like this could solve it!