A full-stack developer for humans

What problem did I solve?

English Language Learners (ELLs) need a better way to learn nursing-specific vocabulary because they face acute challenges in both comprehension and regulation.

This application aims to reduce the amount of tedious repetition faced by ELL nursing students, so they can focus on content - not linguistics.

There is also more at stake for an ELL nursing student. Cultural stigma, fear of public speaking and struggles with metalinguistics (what language does, as opposed to what language means) all collude to hamper an ELL student from succeeding.

How did I solve it?

In a nutshell: Research ⇨ Prototype ⇨ Test ⇨ Iterate ⇨ Test

I prototyped a phone app that allows a user to read academic text while swapping chunks of text back and forth between Spanish and English.

After interviewing nursing students, their need to leverage both conversational and academic English was clear. How can they begin to master both content-specific vocabulary as well as colloquial courtesies and idioms?

Interviewing English as a Second Language (ESL) instructors uncovered the concept of codeswitching - blending a person's L1 (their native language) and L2 (their newly acquired language, learned later in life) in a coordinated effort to deepen their understanding of the new language.

I needed to test my assumption that, if specifically encouraged to blend their primary and secondary languages together, an ELL student will learn more words faster and more comfortably.

So, what did I actually do?

Before creating a valuable prototype, I needed to create meaningful personas to reference during decision making. Powerful personas are the synthesized compilation of multiple user interviews and maintain a human face during development.

Creating personas

Personas, such as this one outlining Katerina's journey starting before enrolling in nursing school in the US, create empathy for potential users as well as uncover previously unexplored touch points and user experience opportunities.

For example, Katerina was a nurse in her home country. She understands medical terminology, but needs to map it to English.

[below] A usability test for my language app, LangWhich

What were my assumptions?

One of my primary assumptions was that, if I could make it easier for a person to switch between their L1 and their L2, I would make it easier for them to increase the overlap between their L1 and L2. This, in my mind, was a path to developing fluency.

So, a portion of the usability test was crafted in an attempt to find the threshold of the ratio of of a user's L1 and L2 before it became uncomfortable or disorienting to successfully use the application for learning.

Somehow, I didn't notice an even more dangerous assumption: was I making an app specifically for people to codeswitch? The app was supposed to help people navigate languages. Codeswitching is a tool a user has in their arsenal to accomplish this task - it's not the primary reason for someone to use the app.

People are using the app to learn nursing-specific vocabulary.

What feedback did I get from users?

I performed three separate usability tests. One on a student in a nurse practitioner track, one on a research assistant and one on a bilingual user.

Everyone was trying to click everything
People were afraid they were going to be tested
People wanted control over the codeswitching
People were very frustrated that the app controlled the codeswitching
Did I mention that people didn't want the app controlling what they saw or did?

It's quite understandable. Humans don't want an application to dictate what they see and how they interact with content.

How did I pivot?

I reviewed all of the feedback and tried to find patterns and common responses to my questions. Once I saw similar behaviors exhibited in my users, I could localize how successful certain features were.

What did I pivot?

My users needed more control. Or, less needed to change. Basically, too much was happening, at once. The app was trying to be too much to too many people.

So, some objectives for a next phase are to:

Simplify everything
Give users complete control
Allow users to save and compare terms
Adjust app based on location it will be used in - studying on the train? In class? During clinical rotations?

[below] A usability test in progress

An app for Nursing Students

Who did I do this for?

What problem did I solve?

How did I solve it?

So, what did I actually do?

Creating personas

What were my assumptions?

What feedback did I get from users?

How did I pivot?

What did I pivot?

What are the takeaways?

Usability Testing

Experience Design

Gotchas