Although I find myself having to scroll endlessly to my birth year when I need to enter my birthdate on online forms, I still have been able to maintain a youthful mindset by always looking for my next play and never settling for “this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”
So now I’m looking to take all of the visual design experience I’ve gained as an instructional designer–and currently a learning experience designer–and transition someday into UX design. I’ve completed a UX design certification on Coursera and now I’m looking to gain some real world experience. And since it’s unlikely that anyone will give someone with no formal UX design experience a job, I’m taking it upon myself to create a real project that I can work on in my spare time.
My project will be a new web app to learn how to speak Thai without going through formal lessons and structure, and instead learn by listening to real-life conversations and learning how to be a part of the conversation too.
Starting out, I have a basic description of this app and what it will do. I’ll take you with me as I then sketch some wireframes on paper, bring those into Adobe XD and Figma, fine-tune the experience, and then finally implement on this website as a web app.
Here’s the description and basic functionality of the app:
Thai Conversations is for people who want to learn the Thai language without going through the trouble of memorizing grammar rules and nonessential vocabulary words. Thai Conversations takes you through real conversations that real people have, and then we translate them, first word by word, and then the meaning of each phrase. It’s fun and interesting and instantly applicable to everyday conversations you’ll have with the people you meet.
The app will allow you to:
- Create a profile
- Log into your profile
- Watch videos at variable speeds
- Learn new words with virtual flashcards
- Check your knowledge with multiple choice quizzes
- View a history of completed episodes
- Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are available
- Share episodes with a friend
- Practice a conversation by recording yourself
- Share your recorded conversations on social media
Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll write a description for each screen that the app will need, so I can then start drawing on paper what each screen will look like.
