Context

Whether it’s for business or for pleasure, important conversations in English can be stress-inducing, especially if it is not your first language. Magoosh English Speaking (MES) was created with the intention to help non-native English speakers gain the skills to lead a meeting, give a presentation, and influence others, knowing that she or he just made a great impression.

MES innovatively uses machine learning to give users instant feedback about pronunciation, fluency, and keywords. On top of that, MES brings in personal tutors to polish vocabulary, grammar, and overall communication efficacy.

Solution

As the team’s product designer, I helped to create a more user-friendly and visually appealing version of the English program. During my contract with the team, I helped to bridge the gap between MES’s no-code beta prototype created on Bubble.io with only a handful of consistent users, to a coded and well-designed product that shipped to hundreds of new users. 

Original Problem

The issue in this scenario was that when I joined, Magoosh English Speaking (MES) was a no-code beta prototype. It did not yet have much attention to usability nor visual design as it was in its initial phases. Their goal in hiring me was to help turn this skeletal prototype into a product that was both seamlessly functional for users as well as aesthetically delightful in order to ultimately ship it successfully.

MES’s goal during this early version was to:

a) Debug the existing product

b) Acquire more users

c) Ultimately expand the product’s scope using marketing and design techniques. 

Methodologies

I conducted the following methodologies with guidance from my two product managers. They were done in no particular order, rather in an Agile UX manner, as this was a fast-paced, chaotic startup environment. 

• UX Research

  • Competitive analysis of similar companies

  • Heuristic evaluation

  • Hotjar

    • Heatmap tracking

    • Screen recordings

    • Data analytics

  • Usability testing

  • Google Analytics Data analysis

• UX Design

  • Hand-drawn wireframe sketches

  • Sketch Low-fidelity wireframes

• UI Design

  • Sketch high fidelity mockups with attention to visual design

    • Uploads and annotations into Zeplin for easy handoff to developers

Redefined Problem

After conducting various rounds of A/B utilizing the above methodologies, our team found that there was asynchronicity between the developers, product managers, and design. This was because there were some varying ideals of efficiency versus quality. 

Redefined Solution

From the user research, it became apparent that all professional opinions regarding quality over quantity were valid and needed to be addressed. For example, we found that it was critical to both build credibility via sharp designs and functional user flows, while it was equally important for the product features to be released in a timely manner in order to increase user engagement. 

We learned that there was a need for both ends of this spectrum, i.e. functional and beautiful designs as well as coded and released features, because that is what happens in a startup. Everything is rapid and critical all at the same time rather than having the luxury at a large, established company to make incremental and inconspicuous tweaks over time. 

With apt communication and problem-solving skills, we as a team were able to overcome these challenges and successfully ship multiple versions of our newly designed and developed Magoosh English Speaking product.

My Role

In my time with Magoosh English Speaking, I successfully collaborated with two product managers to research and design new features as well as redesigning preexisting features in order to increase the scope. The methods I used to do so included UX Research via usability testing, data analysis, and heatmap tracking and visual recordings using HotJar. I also utilized A/B testing with users to analyze the degree to which the newly implemented designs and features based on the user research were improving our business margins. 

Additionally, as the principal product designer, I took the initiative to provide regular design and information architecture evaluations in order to identify the areas of the product that required the most attention. I then regularly prioritized the level of urgency and importance of each of these suggested revisions and tackled those design alterations accordingly.

Conducting remote user interviews via Skype.

Target Users

The target audience for Magoosh English Speaking is young working professionals who do not speak English as their native language. While there were some users who reported that they used the product primarily for personal use, the vast majority of users had the goal of improving their low-level conversational English for professional reasons. MES targeted its features to help users improve their English speaking skills for scenarios such as delivering presentations, asking for a promotion, professional social settings, and more.

In regards to demographics, a survey conducted reveals data that shows that on average, the users were between the ages of 20-35 years old. Additionally, the survey revealed that the majority of users were of Asian descent with a roughly 50/50 split in the proportion of males to females.