overview
My team and I had chosen Duolingo's brief for 2023 D&AD's New Blood Awards. This was not an open brief, but rather we had to stick with promoting Duolingo's math app. This actually helped my team branch out creatively to figure out the core issue of math illiteracy and struggles for those who require support. Through this research, we learned a lot about digital accessibility and the depth and complexities that come with it.
the problem
Duolingo wants to gain traction on their app "Duolingo Math", whether from those who already use Duolingo or those who are new and need help with math.
In our heuristic evaluation, we found that the current Duolingo Math app didn't have language options, had clunky UX, lacked the playfulness of Duolingo, lacked incentives, didn't explain why a user got an answer wrong, lacked categories for math age range, didn't offer advanced levels of math, and lacked visual examples.
the solution - summed up
We had come up with a variety of different ways to handle these problems, such as:
1. Gameifying the app so it could be as fun as Duolingo's language app
2. Make the math app user friendly for those with learning disabilities such as Dyscalculia
3. Break down the language barrier by making it accessible to any language
4. Bring the app on the go with real life situations to help the learning stick with the user, and help them navigate math problems on a daily basis. Example being counting change.
5. Highlight math anxiety
final case study video
Animation Created by: Gabriela Sorto & Natalie Betances. Animated Assets Created by: Myself
Music: Ping Pong Swing by Giulio Fazio, Indie Acoustic Type Beat Oreo by Powfu x Rex Orange County
empathy interviews
the personas
We wanted our personas to feel inclusive and diverse to show that anyone could struggle with math and need help from time to time.
Persona 1
Persona 2
Persona 3
Sasha Solice POV
Elissa Marie POV
Arturo Domínguez POV
ideating
Team Ideation
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Chosen Features
our solution: math duobles
UX/UI Created by: Gabriela Sorto, Slides Created by: Natalie Betances, Animated Assets Created by: Myself
Although I am not a copywriter, I was super happy when the word "doable" popped into my head as the perfect pun combination with Duo the owl, and the rest of my team agreed with the name. In these slides we show our solution to the list of problems mentioned earlier.
app layout example & taskflow
illustrated assets
script & storyboarding for animation
further iteration & prototyping
UX/UI & Prototyping Created by: Myself
I was tasked with creating a further iteration of the app with a prototyped interaction after the project was already completed. I chose to focus on the speech/ audio aspect of the app and wanted to display the celebration screen that users would encounter if they got the correct answer.
Music: Chanson De L'Armour by Aaron Paul Low
outcome + reflections + next steps
I truly loved working on this project because I was able to let my illustration skills shine in comparison to the other, non-illustrative projects we had gotten assigned to in class. I did however find myself disappointed due to my weakness in animation and After Effects which led my team to carry that portion of the work themselves. I did feel more accomplished when I was able to simulate motion in Protopie for my second iteration, but would love to one day come back to this project with a more thorough knowledge of animation. Overall this project was a lot of fun, and although we did not win an award for this entry, I learned a lot and can apply these prototyping skills on any UX/UI project in the future.
