Mobile
B2C
0 to 1
My Role
UX Design
UI Design
User Research
Product Management
Design Problem
Imagine you’re a Chinese university student gearing up for the postgraduate entrance exam (PEE). The pressure is on—not just from your own ambitions but also from your family and society. Everyone your age seems to be striving for the same goal. This year, nearly five million students are competing, but only 16% will actually make it into graduate school. The stress is intense, and it only gets worse when you think about the English section of the exam, which isn’t your strongest area. You know you need to build your vocabulary, but where to start?
You look around and find countless vocabulary apps and books, but they’re all over the place. Most of them are too broad, covering everything from daily conversation to business terms, or even specialized fields. With your limited time and specific needs, you wish for something that’s tailored, focused, and designed just for the postgraduate exam. But it seems like such a tool doesn’t exist.
What can you do at this point?
Design Solution
Easyword is a specialized vocabulary app designed specifically for students preparing for the English section of PEE. Unlike other apps, Easyword targets the precise vocabulary and phrases students need to succeed, cutting out the noise and helping people study smarter, not harder.
Design Background
Identifying a Rising Trend in Postgraduate Prep
While working at Offcn Edtech, one of China’s top education companies, we spotted a rising trend: products for the postgraduate entrance exam were booming, quickly becoming the second biggest category. It was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up.
Tapping into Offcn’s Established User Base
Offcn Edtech had a huge user base from its offline courses and aimed to bring these users online. With English as a mandatory subject for the postgraduate exam, we saw an opportunity to kickstart online postgraduate education by focusing on English vocabulary.
Creating Easyword: A Strategy Beyond Profit
Offcn Edtech had a huge user base from its offline courses and aimed to bring these users online. With English as a mandatory subject for the postgraduate exam, we saw an opportunity to kickstart online postgraduate education by focusing on English vocabulary.
Market Research
I began with a simple competitive analysis. Through this process, I aimed to identify the weaknesses and attractive features of the most popular vocabulary apps on the market, and to understand the possible reasons behind their popularity.
User Research
Next, I conducted interviews with 10 students who were actively preparing for their postgraduate entrance exams. These conversations provided valuable insights into their needs, habits, and challenges related to vocabulary memorization.
Interview Findings:
User Research
I categorized the 10 participants according to their English proficiency, vocabulary memorization habits, and different needs.
I identified three main types of target users out of four. Then, I created personas and user journey maps for each user type to better understand their experiences with memorizing vocabulary.
User Type 1
A
C
User Type 2
E
I
D
J
User Type 3
F
G
H
User Type 4
B
User Research
Through the quantitative survey, we aim to validate that our previous findings and identified opportunities represent the common needs of many people.
Design Highlight
I explored several methods for memorizing words, and one traditional approach that stood out was using physical word cards. These cards are popular because they facilitate quick memorization and are easily customizable to suit individual learning styles. With this in mind, virtual word cards can be designed as a digital counterpart to the physical ones, replicating their interactions with minimal effort required from users to adapt. This makes the transition from physical to digital seamless, retaining the familiar benefits while enhancing convenience.
Design Highlight
We conducted usability testing with 8 participants to see if there were any usability problems and collected some feedbacks from the potential users.
Task 1
You are going to memorize some words every day. You need to make a plan according to your schedule.
Task 2
You start learning today’s new words.
Task 3
Review the words you have learned to consolidate your memory.
We asked each participant to fill out this SUS (System Usability Scale) form based on their usability testing experience.
We also used the one-click testing method to confirm if the visual layout of our app is reasonable.
During usability testing, I identified an issue with the “modify the plan” page: users were unclear that “daily words” and “estimated completion date” were linked. To address this, I changed the interaction to a scrolling mechanism for better clarity.
Design Outcome
After several rounds of iterations, the second-day retention increased from:
At that time, in the landscape of digital products within the Chinese education industry, achieving a next-day retention rate of 25-35% was regarded as highly impressive.
Post-reflection