Canada is known for its substantial immigrant population and commitment to multiculturalism. Like many immigrants, we understand the struggles of keeping our home country's culture and language alive for our children and future generations. We've heard similar concerns from other immigrants and wanted to help.
Our mission is to support non-native English-speaking families in Ontario, Canada, by helping them pass down their mother tongue and cultural values to their children. We aim to make this process easy, engaging, affordable, and less challenging. We strive to create environments where children can practice and embrace their heritage languages and cultural identities while socializing with peers from similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This ensures they remain connected to their roots while thriving in an English-speaking region.
Our solution involves a mobile app for parents and children to join various community-based book and movie clubs in different languages. These clubs host regular virtual meetings with planned activities, creating an environment for kids to communicate and engage in the club's language. Competitions are organized to further encourage engagement and incentivize activities that improve language skills. These clubs provide platforms for both parents and kids to socialize and connect with others who share a passion for their language and culture.
First, we needed to verify our hypothesis, that maintaining the language of their homeland is a big concern for many immigrants. If this is true, as UX researchers and designers, we need a deep understanding of both parents' and children's experiences to create the best solution. We wanted to understand why keeping their homeland's language is important and what challenges, needs, and experiences both kids and parents face in this endeavour.
As we were targeting a broad audience who may have very different needs and experiences, we had to narrow down the target demographic to increase the efficiency and accuracy of our research and deliver a high-quality solution. Therefore, we focused on the young parents of immigrant families in Ontario who are between 30 and 45 years of age.
For this research, we employed a variety of methods to uncover the challenges and difficulties parents face, as well as opportunities for enhancing their experiences. These methods included:
1
Desk Research
2
Non-Participant Observation
3
Interviews
4
Qualitative Surveys
Based on the research findings, we created a user persona and a journey map of the parents. Subsequently, we developed a mood board encapsulating everything we have learned.
Mother of two bilingual kids in her 30s who immigrated to Canada and now lives in the GTA.
Aware: Sees the value in preserving & developing her mother tongue in her kids, constantly looking for new ways to do it.
Following the mood board, we engaged in a brainstorming session to explore potential solutions:
Platform: Mobile App
Description:A book and cinema club designed for children of various ages within the same language community. They would convene regularly online to discuss books and movies in their native language. The app would also facilitate connections between the kids and their parents, encouraging discussions on various topics and the sharing of experiences.
Additional Features:
To develop our app, we employed the card sorting approach. Initially, we compiled keywords related to users and their app goals. Subsequently, we brainstormed the app's content and features, categorizing them based on relevance and logical information architecture (IA).
After card sorting, we constructed the initial Information Architecture (IA) for the app, drawing inspiration from Instagram as a guide.
Building upon the IA, we sketched our initial ideas.
Following the initial sketches, we developed a more refined low-fidelity prototype of the app. Below are some examples of the low-fidelity prototypes:
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We asked participants and experts to review our low-fidelity prototype and engage with it.Some of the most constructive feedback we received included:
Based on the valuable feedback we received form usability testing and the existing low-fidelity design, we developed our high-fidelity prototype. Some examples are shown below:
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
