I’m a master procrastinator.
Last year I started learning Greek since I love the culture and have some friends there with whom I wanted to speak their language. I wasn’t motivated enough to keep going, it was also hard to keep up due to my day-to-day duties. After three months, I stopped taking lessons.
Fast forward to this day, a sponsored ad showed up on my Instagram feed:
Onboarding
I’m not sure if I want to commit to the app by making a new account, so I’ve tapped the “try a free lesson”. After selecting Greek, it also asked me for my country of residence, which was quite weird. Why would they need this information? At first glance, it seems this could be avoided to reduce friction. Also if they need this information, a short explanation would be nice, to develop trust and transparency.
Conclusion
Every new screen, especially in the onboarding, should earn it’s place. We want to bridge the gap and enable people as seamless experience as possible.
Making an account
The form for making an account is quite straightforward, on the other hand, I want to try a free lesson, why would I need to make an account? To be able to commit by providing my email, I would like to know if I’m getting value from the app, and it was kind of misleading since I had the option to make an account in the first screen. They do provide other sign-up options, which makes account creation faster.
I’ve almost missed it, but the checkbox for agreeing on the terms is preselected - without digging deeper, but this might be a huge red flag in terms of GDPR.
Conslusion
Provide value first, and then ask for users information. They would be glad to proceed once they see they’re getting a solution to their problem. Also, the preselection of the checkbox for consent is sketchy.
Tutorials
Going through the tutorials, I noticed that I flew by the images without paying much attention. I took another look and went through each slide:
Welcome to Pimsleur, let’s get started - I already got the greeting and information that the lessons would be phonetic. Also, there wasn’t an actual video here, just an image that mimics that.
Review conversational lessons with visual review tools - Here I get the info about badges for each lesson, which I believe it’s a nice feature, gamification comes to mind which I expected.
Each lesson is designed by native experts - This is good to know, but I believe it is implied.
Get your personalized learning experience - Learning about choosing an avatar doesn’t really bring much value to me, seeing my progress and earning daily streaks sounds cool, but I also am expecting that from this kind of app.
Conclusion
Tutorials were nice to have, but apart from appearing as a nice feature, in the process of onboarding, it looked like it produces a lot of friction. Also, the last slide in the tutorial was a selling point, in which I don’t even know I like the app, so how would someone expect me to commit by buying the license?
Getting to the app, finally
I’ve never used this app before, so in those cases, I go through the content of each page. It seems to me that there are a lot of features, which is good, but it felt like it was too much. I won’t go into much detail but the main things I’ve noticed:
On each page, there are popups in the forms of tooltips, notifications, settings, which break the focus and introduce additional friction
On Me page, for example, there are profile stats that users probably don’t need in the beginning. Although there are some gamification elements, it is done in a way that doesn’t incentivize people to use the app more frequently.
Having indicators in the form of circles on the top, which show how many lessons I have left, feels valuable to know where I am in the language learning journey
It seems that the voice content is structured in a way to align with beginners who have never heard the language, giving immediate conversational skills.
Conlusion
More options mean more problems, and this is especially true when you are seeing something for the first time. What could be interesting is to initially show certain features, and then slowly add options as users become better. It keeps simplicity for new users and brings power to advanced users.
Free lesson
As I started my free lesson, I noticed lots of features like voice coach, flashcards, and so on. I ignored those and focused on the content of the lecture. Although I remembered all the words in the conversation from my experience before, I felt like I could learn a new language from scratch with this technique.
Potential redesign
Based on all the research, I’ve decided to take a stab at redesigning the onboarding and the lesson learning of the app. I’ll focus on making a wireframe of the main flow.
Assumptions
Some of the assumptions I have made during research about the app:
It’s hard to follow all that you can do in the app (flashcards, reminders, voice coach, etc.)
The content of the lesson is great, but it can be presented in a better way
People want to test an app before making an account and paying for a subscription
Did a quick check on Quora to check about other pain points from real users:
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide you with a transcript that would be much needed mostly for languages using a different script”
“Also, there is the price. It is very expensive however, many libraries carry the program so it’s always possible to borrow it”
“Note that Pimsleur is designed only to get you to a "getting around" and "making small talk" level”
The transcript is something I haven’t thought about, apart from getting that it could help with the accessibility of the app to people with hearing disabilities.
What if..
we introduced features one by one while doing a lesson? What if we don’t need to make an account to do a free lesson? And finally, what if we could personalize the experience for each user?
I’ve introduced transcription in the lesson (based on the comments found in Quora), and removed other features so the user can focus on the lesson. I realized that the UI of the player doesn’t need much change, so I changed everything around it.
During some iterations, I managed to compose a wireframe of the happy path flow. From entering the app to finishing the flow, I’ve introduced the app’s features progressively, to mimic the learning experience in the lesson but also to avoid overwhelming the users with lots of features.
Also, I removed the necessary making of the account at the beginning, and put it at the end of the experience, if the user sees value in the lesson. This would potentially reduce churn, and I’ve also introduced reward points and clear value for making an account.
General conclusion
The researched app has a great learning technique, and it’s very good for people starting out with a new language. The main pain point I’ve observed is a bunch of features and popups that overwhelm the user. I’ve tried to address this in the wireframe, with the goal of gradually introducing certain features, and providing a reward at the end of the experience. Other things I’ve covered:
Removed the need for mandatory account creation for a free lesson (lowering churn)
Easier picker of languages (less friction) by showing frequently selected in a button-like fashion instead of a list
Introduced transcription (for better accessibility)
If I had more time:
I would work more on the timings of when we introduce a new feature, as this would need more research and testing to nitpick
Would think about the gamification, and how points affect the experience in more detail
Interactions between screens, small details like how the points show up
Making the account flow and payment happy path
Would like to introduce a book your coach through the app, as it could be an additional feature, like an upgrade to the voice coach feature
Errors and edge cases
I would also try to do more research and check in more depth all the assumptions, and in the meantime try out the wireframe with potential users, to get their impression. Then I would use that data to make high-fidelity designs, with the goal of making a usable prototype to do some more testing.