Speak+
Client
Wall Street English
Problem
Wall Street English, a global English language learning academy catering to both children and adults, offers a suite of digital learning tools based on their proven method of supporting learners throughout their English education journey. They recognised a gap in their product offering. Although learners were making progress in understanding and writing English, there was an opportunity to assist them in practicing speaking skills and applying their learning in practical, conversational contexts.
We were approached to assist in identifying a potential solution through incorporating user research and product design. Our task was to design and build a prototype that would enable Wall Street English to test with learners, understand their needs, and validate the solution. The aim was for this prototype to eventually evolve into a standalone digital tool.
Research
After rounds of learner and stake holder interviews, we ran a few collaborative ideation workshops that allowed us to generate a collection of hypothesis statements that we could go on to test through rounds of wireframing and early design prototypes.
Learner goals
During the research phase we identified the following needs of learners:
Flexibility
The freedom to access classes in their own time, 7 days a week from any country
Opportunity
Plenty of speaking time that allows them to practice what they are learning in their lessons and apply it in a conversational setting
Confidence
Build confidence by speaking with learners at the same English speaking level as them
Feedback
Gain feedback from a professional teacher in a relaxed and low pressure environment
Solution
We designed and prototyped an end to end experience that included the following:
Sign up through an onboarding journey that involved a short quiz that would determine their English level to help place them into groups of learners at the same level to help build confidence.
Designed a class booking system to ensure flexibility for learners to book classes that suit their busy lifestyles and choose topics that are interesting to talk about to increase their speaking opportunity.
Integrated the tool into their world class digital classroom platform that allowed them to speak with other learners and gain feedback from a professional teacher.
Learnings and outcomes
One of the key learnings we discovered was that building a quiz that tested a user’s speaking ability was difficult. We decided to remove the quiz and allow the learners to self select their ability based on level descriptions. As part of this, I explored and tested a solution using ChatGPT and an AI avatar to have an initial conversation and score the learner based on predefined metrics. Unfortunately, this idea was out of budget but was well received by the client.
Following successful testing with Wall Street English students, the tool has now been rebranded and released as Speak+ and can be found here.
