Context

When I lived in New York, I was going to a lot of Harry Potter trivia pub nights. Unfortunately I hadn't read the books in a long time so it was difficult answering all the questions! So I thought, "how can I re-learn all the details that I've forgotten, without rereading every single book?"

Verbadisco is a mobile vocabulary learning app for Harry Potter fans. Users can learn vocabulary and trivia with digital flashcards and take quizzes. Users can also earn points for their Houses as they progress through levels while competing with their friends.

This app was created as a student project as part of CareerFoundry's UX Fundamentals course. This project uses content from the Harry Potter world, which is trademarked by J. K. Rowling. All content was created and is owned by J.K. Rowling and I do not claim ownership any of it or the world of Harry Potter.

Competitive Analysis

First, I looked at the pros/cons of 3 other vocabulary learning apps that are on the market. I examined:

• what made these apps great
• how they met the goals of users
• thought about how I would make these apps better

I found that all of these apps are intuitive and easy to use while accomplishing their goal of being a useful tool for users who want to learn vocabulary.

Some problems I found were that Quizlet has no clear onboarding process and Word of the Day has no testing so I wasn't sure how users retained the information.

User Research & Analysis

I conducted user interviews to better understand how people approach learning about new subjects and new vocabulary. Using insights from these research methods, I was able to pinpoint common trends and themes.

User Personas

Focusing on user behaviors, needs and challenges and user research commonalities, I created a user persona.

User Flows

Wireframing

Usability Testing

I tested participants with a low-fidelity prototype. The main goals were to evaluate how well users could register, review a category of words, do a test, and view their profile.

The biggest problems I found were that users were confused about how to move on to the next word in the lesson deck and they had trouble recognizing the icons in the navigation.

In the mid and high fidelity prototypes, I fixed these by adding buttons underneath each word and used clearer iconography in the navigation.

Retrospective

Challenges

• I tested participants with a low-fidelity prototype. The main goals wehe mid and high fidelity prototypes, I fixed these by adding buttons underneath each word and used clearer iconography in the navigation.

Improvements

• I would go through another round of usability tests using the high-fidelity prototype to see what users thought of functionality and experience.
• Then I would do another iteration of the app, where I would also spend more time on interactivity and other features.

What's Next

• Conduct another round of usability testing with the new prototype.