DECISION-MAKING PROCESS IN LANGUAGE LEARNING APP SELECTION
How language learners select learning apps in App Store?
THE PROBLEM
The goal of the study was to know what are the key information for language learners to make decisions and how to improve app store to support language learners make better decisions.
The reason I selected this topic was that I love learning languages. I think it is a great way to understand other cultures. And while there are more and more people learning languages by mobile apps, I think it is important to know how language learners make their decisions on which app to choose and why they choose it.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
This is a three-month project conducted from July to September 2017.
MAKE OF THE TEAM
This is an individual project. I conducted the research and proposed design suggestions.
KEY GOAL
To understand how language learners make decisions on apps and how app store design could support the decision-making process.
PROCESS OVERVIEW
The process of the project can be divided in in three parts: literature review, user research and data analysis.
The first part is literature review, I explored this topic by reading related papers such as decision-making theories and app selection behaviour to expend my knowledge in the field.
Second, I conducted a series of user study in lab setting involved 9 participants.
I used think aloud protocol and semi-structured interviews to capture data while the participants undertaking assigned tasks on a smart phone.
Third, I analysed qualitative data such as categorising the information used for decision-making, and quantitative data like the number of how many apps participants viewed before they made the decision.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
The key information cues that language learners considered in the app selecting decision-making process was identified.
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Aesthetics: how the visual design of icon and interface look like.
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Level of language learning content: whether the content is for beginners or advanced level.
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Reviews and Ratings: how other users said about the app.
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Price: whether the provided content worth the price.
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Familiarity: if it is from a familiar content provider .
Ratings of the App
Left: An example of app ratings presented in search result page.
Right: An example of ratings and reviews presented in app individual page.
Level of Content
An example of lack of clear information about the level of language learning. Instead participants tried to infer this from other information cues that were available. e.g. a cartoonish design could be an app for kids/beginners.
DESIGN SUGGESTIONS
Based on the research findings, I offered five design suggestions to language learning app providers and the app downloading platform that could help their user make decisions easier.
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Provide a free or lite version app: a lower cost for users to try out.
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Present clear level of content difficulty: so the users can find an app that matches their language ability.
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Make informative preview pictures: use short annotations in screen shots so the user can understand how the app works in one glance.
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Write short and clear description: keep the most important information in the first few lines because users rarely expand the description to read more.
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Try it before downloading it: provide a free trail on the app store page before downloading the app.
Make informative preview pictures
Examples of informative preview pictures.
Try it before downloading it
An example of interactive trial of an English vocabulary quiz app.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
CONCLUSION
By understanding the key information cues of decision-making process of language learners, I came up with design suggestions for improving the experience of app selection.
In summary, the results seem to warrant three conclusions: First, language
learners make their decisions in language learning app selection with a set of information cues.
Second, language learners adopted different information cues when selecting different types of apps.
Last, language learners perform their decision-making process differently in terms of the complexity of the language learning app.
This study has taken a step in the direction of exploring the information required by language learners to choose a language learning app, which may lead to a better understanding of language learners’ decision-making process on app selection.