UX Design | Clickable Mockup | Mobile App
LINGOPEDIA
Rethinking Language Learning
Overview
A language learning app designed for advanced language learners, offering diverse tasks and authentic content to help refresh and deepen language skills.
My Role
Solo UX/UI Designer
Tools
Figma, Marvel, Google Forms, Pen & Paper
In a nutshell
Background
This project began as a personal initiative when I started learning European Portuguese and noticed a lack of engaging, content-rich tools tailored to this specific variant of the language.
Starting Thoughts..
As I explored ways to improve my own learning experience, I came up with the idea of building an app that combines language learning with endless real-world content.
Creating LINGOPEDIA
The core functionality of the app is its integration with the Wikipedia API, allowing users to learn Portuguese through endless authentic articles. This approach not only improves vocabulary and reading comprehension but also keeps learners engaged with a wide range of interesting topics.
Check my clickable Mockup out!
Interested in more?
Check out my full design process
EMPATHIZE
Competitor Analysis & User Research
I started my research with a competitor analysis to better understand who my competitors were and what they were doing well or poorly.
Competitor Analysis
I conducted a comparative analysis of four apps — Practice Portuguese, Memrise, Learn Portuguese, and LingQ — to understand how each engages users, delivers feedback, and structures its learning strategy. I evaluated their approaches based on user onboarding, content delivery, and interaction design:
-
Strengths
-
Task Content
-
Weaknesses
-
User Interface
-
User Experience
-
Opportunities
.png)
Main Insights
Most apps rely heavily on repetition, encouraging memorization rather than true sentence construction.
Conclusion: Standing out by focusing on sentence construction and applied to practiseise to help learners actively use what they've learned.
Only one was fully in the target language; the rest used English explanations, which may support beginners but limit immersion for advanced learners.
Conclusion: Opportunity to offer immersive experiences fully in the target language, supporting both comprehension and fluency.
Sentence topics were often disconnected, and informal language — including slang and idiomatic expressions — was largely absent, despite its importance for real-life communication and cultural understanding.
Conclusion: Add value by differentiation of teaching the language as it's truly used in everyday conversation, including informal speech, tone, and cultural nuances.
User Research
First Research
I conducted an online survey to explore users’ learning habits and identify common challenges.
Second Research
While awaiting responses, I analyzed app store reviews and language learning forums from competing apps to uncover user frustrations, needs, and expectations.
Main Insights
Language Plateau
Many advanced learners at B1/B2 level face a language plateau, where progress seems to stagnate. While they have a solid grasp of grammar and vocabulary, they struggle to respond in complex conversations. This difficulty becomes apparent during discussions on technical topics or while reading academic texts. Overcoming this challenge requires developing fluency and confidence to express ideas.
Conclusion: The design should reduce cognitive overload, encourage risk-taking in expression, and provide meaningful opportunities for authentic language use—helping users move from competence to true fluency.
Learning materials and ressources
To avoid the language plateau, advanced learners need resources that cover complex grammar, specialized vocabulary, and authentic content. However, finding well-structured, level-appropriate materials is difficult. Many struggle to access European Portuguese resources like literature, films, and music, which are essential for understanding cultural context and idiomatic expressions unique to the language.
Conclusion: Focus on curating accessible, level-appropriate European Portuguese content with clear structure and cultural context to help advanced learners overcome the language plateau.
Time Constraints
Advanced learners often face time constraints due to busy schedules with work, studies, or family obligations. Balancing language learning with other commitments can hinder consistent progress, making it difficult to dedicate sufficient time for focused study, practice, and immersion.
Conclusion: Offering flexible, time-efficient tools that fit into busy routines and promote consistent, high-quality language practice.
Cultural and Regional Nuances
Advanced learners often struggle with finding listening materials that expose them to a range of vocabulary, accents, and speech styles appropriate for their level. Understanding idiomatic expressions and regional variations, which differ from formal, textbook language, is also challenging. Additionally, adjusting to informal speech, natural rhythm, and intonation used in everyday conversations is a key difficulty in mastering the language.
Conclusion: Provide advanced learners with diverse, level-appropriate listening materials that reflect real-world speech, including regional accents, idioms, and natural conversational flow.
DEFINE
Personas, Empathy Map & User Journey
Using the insights of my interviews, online reviews and competitor analysis, I was now focused on indentifiying and summarize the users needs and pain points. My focus was on questions starting with indication words like who, where, why, how, when.
Persona
Louise Wiliam is a 22-year-old british journalism student who has a deep passion for languages. Her language learning journey began in the beginning of her 2 semester when she decided to study Portuguese as an elective course. Louise's interest in languages and her fascination with Portuguese culture motivated her to relocate to Lisbon during her erasmus year. She has dedicated herself to mastering European Portuguese and currently works aside of her studies part-time in a small portuguese news agency. Louise aspires to further refine her language skills to the point where she can effortlessly express herself with the same depth and nuance as a native speaker. She believes that her language proficiency also opens up professional opportunities. As an advanced learner, Louise actively contributes to language exchange programs and online communities, offering guidance and support to fellow learners who aspire to master European Portuguese. She believes in the power of shared experiences and the importance of helping others along their language learning journeys.
.png)
While the persona offered a broad view of my target users, I wanted to better understand their emotions and behaviors. To do this, I used an empathy map, which helped me step into the user’s perspective and uncover deeper motivations, frustrations, and needs—enabling a more thoughtful and human-centered design solution.
Empathy Map
.png)
The empathy map revealed that learners go through a wide range of emotions during their journey. Access to varied and authentic resources is key to motivation and progress, while immersion in authentic language experiences positively impacts outcomes. Community support also plays a vital role in sustained engagement. To further explore user behavior, I placed my persona in a specific scenario to identify key decision points, touchpoints, and channels—informing more strategic ideation.
User Journey
.png)
The user journey reveals that initial excitement quickly fades when learners realize how limited European Portuguese resources are. The time and effort needed to find quality materials leads to early frustration and disengagement. Even after discovering a useful resource, users often hit a second barrier: the language plateau. At this stage, progress slows despite a solid foundation, which makes continued learning feel discouraging and repetitive.
Which problem to solve?
From my overall research, I chose to address the lack of accessible learning resources. Why? Because..
-
This issue emerges early in the user journey and significantly impacts learner motivation and cultural engagement.
-
It was the most frequently mentioned frustration, contributed to the language plateau many users experience, and revealed a clear market gap.
-
Focusing on this problem aligned with my goal of creating more inclusive language learning tools.
-
Given my limited resources and solo role—it allowed me to tackle a meaningful, high-impact challenge within a realistic project scope.
Define The Problem
European Portuguese is growing in popularity, yet high-quality resources for advanced learners remain limited. Most existing materials focus on Brazilian Portuguese, making self-study difficult and less immersive.
IDEATE
PoC, Wireframes, Prototype & Tests
Brainstorm
To generate solutions that addressed the lack of engaging, real-world content for intermediate learners, I conducted a focused brainstorming session around three key themes: motivation, cultural connection, and learner autonomy.
Given my limited development capacity, I used an Impact vs. Effort matrix to prioritize feasible ideas. I ultimately chose features that emphasized storytelling and contextual learning, such as task-based scenarios and native speaker content, aligning directly with the pain points uncovered in user research.
The Wiki API
I explored solutions based on insights from the user journey while remaining open to new directions. I aimed to create an app that could pull in authentic online content—like news articles or blog posts—for learning purposes. Ideally, this process would be automated to keep materials fresh and engaging. A brief technical investigation led me to the Wiki API as an optimal solution for sourcing and updating relevant content.
How it works
The API provides a structured way to interact with Wikipedia's vast collection of articles and data programmatically. I can use their specific URL to make requests and access its data. For the specific purpose of my idea I included query parameters in the API requests to refine the results received. These parameters include search keywords like article titles, language preferences, pagination options and other specific requirements my concept needs.
Weaknesses
The Wiki-API has a rate limit in place to prevent abuse and ensure fair usage. These limits restrict the number of requests a application can make within a specific time frame.
Also the API is free to use for commercial projects, but it needs to be in line with their licensing terms and requirements. For that a deeper research with the terms and conditions of Wikimedia Foundation is necessary.
Proof of Concept
To validate the core functionality of my concept, I conducted a proof of concept (PoC) focused on accessing and retrieving content from online sources. This allowed me to test the technical feasibility and user value of dynamically integrating real-world materials into the learning experience before moving into full development.
PoC Performance
To test the concept, I taught myself Java and built a prototype in Android Studio. The app fetched article summaries using keyword and language parameters.
Key Technical Challenge
.png)
A key technical challenge was manipulating individual words in the text—removing and re-inserting them without disrupting sentence structure—so users could drag and drop them into the correct position. This interaction allowed me to assess both the technical feasibility and the learning potential of the approach.
Task Flow
After validating my concept, I began outlining core features. My goal was to create an intuitive app with fast onboarding and direct access to its main function. Guided by user research, I prioritized features based on their value to the user—focusing on simplicity, usability, and delivering quick wins to keep learners engaged from the start.
After having defined the features of the app, I created flows for the main tasks:
Low Fidelity Wireframes
During the wireframing phase, I translated user insights into visual layouts that prioritized clarity, usability, and content hierarchy. Using low-fidelity wireframes, I sketched out the app’s core structure—focusing on intuitive navigation, grouping related elements logically, and ensuring that key features were easily accessible. This step helped define the placement of interactive components and set the foundation for a user-friendly interface.
Low Fidelity Prototype Usability Testing
Next, I conducted a usability test which allowed me to uncover usability issues and pain points early on before investing more time and resources into the design.
5 participants
Each 30 minutes
Per Zoom
In the test I gave them a specific task to accomplish. My goal of the test was to identify obstacles in the navigation process in the app that require changes to improve the user experience.
Usability Testing Outcome
BEFORE
AFTER
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
FINALIZE
Prototype & Lessons learned
High Fidelity Prototype
Future Steps
To enhance learning, future iterations could include in-line translations of expressions within the same language, allowing users to save them for review. Additionally, integrating audio recordings by native Portuguese speakers—with synchronized subtitles—could help users grasp natural pronunciation, including features like suppressed syllables and sentence linking, which are crucial in stress-timed languages like Portuguese.
Lessons Learned
Working independently on this project was empowering—I enjoyed shaping the concept and direction myself. However, I learned the value of sharing ideas and gathering outside perspectives to enrich the design process. I also realized the importance of staying open to change, especially during research and testing. Remaining flexible allowed me to uncover better solutions I hadn’t initially considered.