VR Language Learning Program: Project Plateau

This project’s aim was to create VR language learning program that would help language learners from around the world to find like minded people who want to practice their craft and have a way to track and improve their language skills. We thought that VR would be a great medium for language learning since it has been proven that immersion is one of the best ways to learn. We also wanted to design a program that could help language students prevail through the eventual plateau that every language student encounters during their time studying. With these goals in mind we got to work on some lo-fi designs.

Above are the first lo-fi wireframes for the VR app that came with some ideas about what each section of the program is going to be and background ideas. This was a great way to visualize how the program was going to look when going into the design process. It was challenging thinking about UI design in terms of a VR space since depth and FOV angles are something that are specific to VR design. I used references from the Oculus main lobby as well as looked at a plethora of different VR titles to see which UI looked and felt the best overall.

We settled on having a “Scenario Practice”, “Conversation Practice”, and “Student Lounge” as the main parts of the app and we then brainstormed some ideas on how we wanted these different tabs of the app to look like. We wanted each area to feel significant and have purpose.

After some feedback these were the initial Hi-fi wireframes showing how the VR program was coming together. These allowed us to use an XR converter and test the UI elements in VR which was helpful in getting feedback to change some dimensions around as well as switching some indicators to be in better spots for a user to see. This was a big learning moment for me personally as it was first attempt to prototype something in VR the dimensions and the FOV of the user was very important .

These 2 images above were the first hi-fi wireframes made for the VR app. We wanted the user to feel as immersed as possible while at the same time, feel like that have full control over their action’s and UI. I then conducted some user interviews and presented the participants with some different designs to see which they preferred and after applying the feedback the designs below are the improved ones.

The next steps where to use Adobe XD to design the final mock-up and clickable prototype. I got some great insight into what worked and what didn’t work in the previous designs due to the user interviews conducted previously so I got to work on designing what each of the areas would look like as well as prototyping them to have easy to interpret indicators. One thing I learned from testing is that most VR applications require a hover state in order to feel tactile. Users like to use their pointer to hover over an object and that object has to react in some way in order to provide feedback to the user.

Above is the final clickable prototype of the Language Learning VR app. Using all the knowledge gathered from the usability interviews and reports we were able to design an experience that helps promote language learning through immersion. Having to design a UI in VR for the first time brought in many obstacles and really challenged my knowledge of UX design. It opened up an entire new facit of design in VR that I had never seen before hence there was a lot of learning to be done in order to get the best most seamless experience possible. When learning a language, a user wants to be more focused on the language, than the UI/ technology they are using. The future goal is to create a product that people will even forget they’re using it and just get immersed in their language. Here is the link to the clickable prototype: https://xd.adobe.com/view/352d7693-0219-4543-9bb9-e710c5d9fc0a-607e/