CASE STUDY
At its core, Viki is made up of a bunch of language lovers. Through surveys, we found out that most of them are thinking of learning a new language or already studying one. Some enrolled into foreign language courses outside of their school schedules, while others are using apps for self-paced practice.
When asked to rank their favourite foreign languages, Korean was their first choice (Thanks to the popularity of Kpop). Repeatedly, many of them told us that their 'end- goal' of learning Korean is to be able to watch their favourite shows without subtitles.
I've always had an interest in learning new languages. I picked Korean because I love watching Korean drama and hope to one day watch them without waiting for subtitles.
Apart from attending classes, they are also learning the language by watching reality TV Shows, movies and Kdramas. And since we have tons and tons of Kdrama titles, we thought that it would be a good opportunity to use them to create a more meaningful impact on the our community. Now, who says streaming videos is a waste of time?
I led the end-to-end design and collaborated with my Head of Design and my User Researcher on the Discovery Research synthesis.
In addition, I worked alongside a Product Manager, developers and two NLP scientists to create our own Korean video dictionary and to deliver the core features on time.
In short, we launched the Beta version of this project as planned, the project development cycle took us around 2 months weeks to complete, from conception to launch.
I sometimes switch off subtitles while watching videos, and then replay the video to see if what thought was the right translation.
Viki Learn is designed for intermediate Korean language learners. Most of these users are aspire to become professional Korean-English Translators.
We were curious to experience the struggles and challenges of learning a new language. So, before going into writing the Product requirements and scopes, we hired a native Korean teacher from a local university to teach us Korean, for a month.
The teacher would give us tests ranging from writing to speaking. Apart from classes, we also tried using other language learning apps like Duolingo, LingQ to learn on our own (sort of like a competitive analysis).
These firsthand classes gave us a deeper insight in understanding the struggles, and challenges of learning a new language.
Here's the fun part of Viki Learn, users get to watch videos and take quizzes. There are no restrictions or rules, they can also take quizzes and rewatch the same shows over and over again at their own pace without any pressure. This is a self-paced learning platform where they get to adjust the level of difficulty and starting learning. Three types of tests they can take: Vocabulary, listening, and writing.
In addition, we also introduced other core features that will help them to personalise their own learning progress such as our own Video Dictionary and Words Collections.
Watch dramas with Hangul captions and word definitions
See related examples of how a word is used in various dramas
Adjust the difficulty level by slowing down the speech
Look up and save your drama vocab
In retrospect, I think we did a great job at generating awareness and getting new users to try out the Beta release. We let users to sign up for free so they get to experience the value of Viki Learn without having to pay a single cent.
However, about a month after the launch, we noticed a significant drop in web traffic. After some interviews, users told us that they don't see any clear reasons for them to go back to the platform. The main factors were the lack of K-drama titles and the absence of rewards for completing tests/quizzes.
Our first thought was to try to introduce some kind of rewards systems. However, due to budget constraints, we struggled to make the rewards points feasible (ops and logistic).
I guess the lesson here is do not neglect the Retention and Revenue stages when planning a product launch. We were too caught up with creating awareness and getting new users, and failed to make them to continue to stay on.
If I were to be able to go back in time to do this project, I will volunteer to join in high level product strategy discussions to highlight the Retention part with the team. Possibly initiate some 'growth hacking' sessions with the team to generate some ideas. I shouldn't confine myself to just creating prototypes and doing user interviews.
I had the opportunity to learn another design research method called Sacrificial Concepts. We used this method in our Discovery phase to help the team to identify potential product/service ideas for Viki Learn.
The goal is to gather early insights from users quickly and cheaply. We managed to identify some weak ideas that we initially thought were good. Here are some important insights that we gathered from the research sessions.
1. Learn Basic Korean isn't needed at this point
We thought having a Basic Korean section would be helpful. Turned out that this idea simply didn’t fit with their current learning workflow.
Most of them are already proficient in basic Korean. They want to use something that can help them to strengthen their current knowledge and skills.
2. Hard to Evaluate Progress Through Charts
We thought that charts would be an ideal way to convey their learning progress. However, more than 5 users pointed out that they prefer us to 'tell it like it is'. Bar charts are hard to be interpreted, they want to see the exact breakdown of scores/results in plain and simple texts.
On the positive side, we managed to generate some buzz within the Korean fandom community (beyond Viki). Some of them even did their own reviews about the product.
You can study the words that you don’t know. It’s a really great tool that other streaming sites don’t offer.
The team acknowledged that the product positioning was not that strong. Who should be the main users? Perhaps, the main persona should be the language teachers? Because, Viki Learn can become a supplement learning tool to be used in classrooms.
