Sign Language Course
Hackathon project 2020 / Collaboration / Experience Strategy / Wireframing and UI prototyping
What is Memhack: Every four months, Memrise organise a hackathon for all the employees. The idea is not to compete with each other but to leave day-to-day work and jump into exciting, fun, and new projects.
The idea
While ago, I participated in a short course that teaches British Sign Language, which my company organised. Since that, I have wondered why Memrise doesn't have any Sign languages courses. The app uses videos to teach a language, so we will be a great platform to support sign language course. I have asked my college Rob (Memrise language specialist and linguist hippocampus/genius) to work together on a hackathon project. It didn't take me much time to get him on board.
First steps
With our production team's help, we created a course for beginners with some basic and useful British Sign Language phrases. We were ready to upload all the phrases and create a BSL course for beginners. Unfortunately, we soon noticed that the course would be limited as we won't provide any space to practice.
Current app features allow users to learn a language by practising spelling, pronunciation and listening skills. Obviously, for sign language, those features are irrelevant.
Creating flashcards for BSL wasn't our purpose. We wanted to create a space where users could practice communication skills, which means that users should practice production and understanding of the language.
1. Practise in a safe space.
2. Build the ability to understand others.
3. Build the ability to be understood by others.
Concept
We needed to create an area for our users where they will practice and test themselves. Because sign languages are all visual, we design an experience where learners memorise word and phrases by interacting with other learners within our platform.
Solution
Our idea was to create a peer to peer interaction. Users can video record the phrases to get feedback. The second side of that process was to allow learners to watch videos of other peers (related to words they have been learning) and leave feedback. This way, we created a safe space for training.
To test our idea, we created a prototype. We wanted to assay phrases that we have selected and new interactions that we have applied. Plus, we knew that the prototype would be the best medium to present our idea.
To fill our prototype with authentic content, we asked some of our coworkers to record amateur videos. We found out that this activity can be entertaining for users because it gave that extra level of challenge and allows them to get feedback from actual people.
I’m hearing
I’m learning BSL
Where are you from?
At the end
During this project, I had a chance to understand the sign language's semantics better and learn a couple of phrases in BSL. It was also an excellent opportunity to collaborate with team members that I don't get to cooperate in my day to day work.
Most importantly, this project points out how crucial practising communication is in a language learning journey.
I realised that being understood by actual people and getting feedback is a great and motivating way to progress.
Most importantly, this project points out how crucial practising communication is in a language learning journey.
I realised that being understood by actual people and getting feedback is a great and motivating way to progress.