1:1 Mobile tutoring

Work

In late November 2018, we shipped our MVP in South Korea in the Google Play store.

Overview

Rosetta Stone has been a leader and household name in the language learning industry for the past 30+ years. While this has been true in the US, opportunities for growth were being lost as brand recognition outside the US was low, and competition high. Additionally, inconsistent and fragmented product experiences, growing tech debt, and lack of customer insights made it increasingly difficult to meet customer needs.

North Star vs MVP

We envisioned our North Star as a single language learning product that cuts across learner levels, geography, and use case on a global scale. Our immediate goal however, was delivering an MVP that addressed our fastest growing markets and biggest learner needs, while leveraging our existing assets.

My roles

Lead designer

I interviewed learners and tutors to uncover desired outcomes, validate assumptions, and formulate a product roadmap. In addition, I owned UX and visual design of our MVP.

Collaborator

I worked closest with my product manager to scope, split, and sync on tasks. Additionally, I collaborated with two visual designers, three developers, and one QA lead to identify constraints/concerns across our product organization.

Researcher

I led usability tests, interviews, and surveys to capture learner and tutor pain points. I went to the source and talked with users first hand, ensuring our proposed solutions were learner-driven and informed by actual customer feedback.

Negotiator

Multiple high priority items had a tendency to share the same deadline, and have different owners. I made trade-offs with team members about delivery, based on our team’s priorities and dependencies.

Starting with what we knew

The largest share of the market (Asia-Pacific) is the place we have the smallest footprint.

Low brand recognition

The fastest growing markets for English language learning are in Asia-Pacific (APAC), where we are barely present.

Weak product fit

We did not have a strong product market fit for serious/career-minded learners who make up almost twice as much of the market share over casual, hobbyist learners.

Opportunity

There are 1.5 billion English learners globally, and English is growing faster than all other LOTE (languages other than English) combined.

Discovery

Learner interviews

I conducted 7 in-depth interviews with APAC learners to get a better understanding of their learning experiences, motivators, and lifestyle.

Competitive analysis

While many services offered private schooling, private tutors, and mobile app solutions, most tutors were not trained or certified and varied greatly in quality.

Partner interviews

I interviewed partners from China and Korea who told us learners struggle most with speaking and pronunciation. While students are taught English from K-12 they have little opportunity to practice speaking because native English speaking teachers/tutors are unaffordable.

Assumption mapping

Desirability: Career-minded learners value confidence in their English skills over graded proficiency.

Feasibility: We will be able to scale the tutoring org to support learners in APAC.

Viability: Career-minded learners in APAC will pay to have tutoring sessions with native English speakers.

Persona

Validating ideas

Based on our insights and assumptions, our team explored two concepts to test with learners. I distilled our ideas into working prototypes to test the following day.

1. Master Class

The Master Class prototype focuses on validating learners’ interest in content from business leaders. Learners could also participate in group tutoring.

2. Find a tutor

The Find a tutor prototype focused on validating the importance of private tutoring. 1:1 tutoring was frequently requested in learner interviews.

Key takeaways

Learners want 1:1 tutor sessions to practice conversational English focused on specific, real-world business topics.

Learners are most interested in advancing their speaking/conversation skills.
Most learners want tutor services for career advancement.
Access to highly trained, native English speaking tutors is low.

Learners want real-world conversation topics for business and social.
Lack of customized, actionable tutor feedback in competitor offerings
Learners prefer mobile tutoring, so they can study anytime, anywhere

Turning insights into ideas

I created low-fidelity mockups of these concepts and partnered with my product manager and interviewed 17 learners. About half of the interviews were done in Validately.

Tutoring

How do learners prefer to learn?

While learners acknoweldged the value of group sessions (getting familiar with different accents, exposure to different cultures, etc), they ultimately felt private tutoring was more valuable. More 1:1 time with the tutor to ask specific questions and time constraint was the biggest factor.

“I prefer the 1:1 situation because I have more opportunity to talk… you have more opportunity to listen to other persons, but less opportunity to speak.”

Measuring progress

What kind of feedback do learners want?

Many of our learners who talked about their need for native English speaking tutors, also spoke about the need for specific, custom feedback. Learners want to see measurable progress, both quantitative and qualitative feedback that covers pronunciation, grammar, and more. Also, learners expressed the need for constructive feedback, not sugarcoating, from their existing tutors.

“Encouragement is good, but what’s more important is that we need to learn something.”

Iterations on feedback content based on user insights.

Scheduling

Priorities

A surprising insight was that learners prioritized selecting a tutor last. However, learners said that as long as tutors were measured against the same standard and were native English speakers, choosing a specific tutor was of less importance compared to finding a time and day to schedule a session.

Mapping the journey

Details and delivery

Collaboration

It was crucial for our team to be aligned at every stage in the process so we didn’t have any surprises during delivery. I was attached to the hip with my PM, devs, and members of the tutor org as we also worked through issues like:

Edge cases
Tutor portal
Tutor org support/feasibility
Feedback loops
Error states

1:1 Mobile tutoring – anytime, anywhere.

In November 2018, we launched Rosetta Stone’s tutoring service in the Google Play store, in South Korea.

Results

73% of sessions were rated 5 stars
42% of learners booked more than one session
55% of sessions were booked for the next day

The success of our end-to-end tutoring solution was responsible for winning the 2019 Best made for Samsung app and continued partnership with Samsung.

2019 Winner of Best made for Samsung app

We achieved our two biggest goals:

Create a language learning product that learners love and consistently use.
Gain high visibility in APAC where Rosetta Stone was least present.