Chinese Course 2.0
Chinese Course 2.0 is a service design project for new Tongji Chinese course system. It aims to provide continuous learning experience during the whole semester for foreign students.
Presented by me and Jesse in 4 weeks | 2016
"I don't learn much from Chinese Classes."
Chinese is a compulsory course for foreign students in Tongji. However, students are frustrated by the uninteresting classes and inefficient homework on books. As the journey map below illustrates, students' concentration goes down during classes, and some even left during break.
Discontinuous learning process
According to interviews, most students are eager to learn Chinese as an enhancement for their career, to make daily life easier or just out of interest. With a more holistic view, we found out the key obstacle for their Chinese learning is the discontinuous learning process.
Missing classes
Skipping classes for traveling is common among foreign students. They got demotivated when they couldn't catch up with classes.
Ineffective homework
Homework mostly is to preview next chapter or to read the words, and students couldn't get enough feedback for their practice.
Unattractive classes
Students are not prepared for new classes. Difficult grammar and new words easily make them bored and lose concentration.
Persona：Jesse, 23, Denmark
The students can be divided into 2 personas based on their expectation level for Chinese learning outcome. Students with high expectation study with strong interest in Chinese and are self-driven. However, the main group have low expectation and less self-driven. We chose to focus on them and call this persona Jesse.
Jesse has very little previous Chinese knowledge, but is willing to learn more. He hopes to learn some basic Chinese and ”101 of Chinese culture”, but is unsure what to expect. Jesse thinks even basic level Chinese will help him in future career. He wants to show that he has some knowledge in Chinese, even on very superficial level. Jesse is willing to do some effort in learning language, because is currently in China.
Chinese Course 2.0
By introducing the Chinese learning App, the new service enables students to choose suitable course level, enhance their study out of class, get more interesting real life tasks and experience Chinese culture at the same time. In a word, the new service provides a continuous learning experience during the whole semester. Let's follow Jesse's journey to experience more.
Preview and Register
Having downloaded the app, Jesse logged in with student ID and passwords. He previewed the chapters for different levels and registered to level Basic.
Mark Difficulties in Exercise
Jesse traveled to Hong Kong. He previewed the first chapter and did exercises on the train. He didn't understand one answer so he marked it and his teacher - Miss Zheng got informed. During the following class, Miss Zheng solved his confusion.
Interesting tasks
Jesse received an interesting task which is to buy something in Chinese and take records. He went into a coffee shop and bought a cup of coffee in Chinese. He took a photo with the Chinese waiter and sent to Miss Zheng. The photo was stored to Jesse's memory file at the same time.
Chinese memories
Jesse got A for Chinese at the end of the semester. He went through his memory file and was very happy because he experienced Chinese culture during the learning journey as well. He gladly shared his memories to social media.
Design Process
First we went through the whole existing service including registration, taking class, doing homework, having exam, getting feedback, etc. We drew the customer journey and pointed out some pain points according to our observation and analysis. Then we conducted interviews with 4 students and 1 teacher and debriefed the information. After that we wrote an executive summary which explained different types of target users and their main problems. It's also the start point of the concept.
System map
MVP prototype video
Process
