MY BELIEF
I devoted myself to develop multiple mini-applications to facilitate young children to learn English. I believed in the positive influences of gamification on young children’s learning. Therefore, when I worked in Education First (EF), I initiated to develop several mini applications with the collaboration with external freelancing programmer and designer. As the product manager, I was responsible for curating concept, defining the requirements for each feature and the desired user experience, bringing the product to market.
EF Reading Platform
The platform targets young learners age 3-10, and the average word count for each daily post is kept at around 80-150 words. Each post contains texts and audio/ video for streaming, and the learning objective is to encourage reading aloud with focus on pronunciation and intonation.
Besides the EF self-owned reading materials, I also sought collaboration with professional publishers, such as Oxford University Press, Highlights.
A new English story will be published every day, and children have to read the story to complete their "daily check-in" process. Children can click the "Record" button at the bottom menu to practice their speaking by recording themselves narrating the published story.
Children or parents are able to see the total numbers of successful ‘daily check-in’ days, and the total count of words read to date. They can also ‘brag’ and share on their WeChat Moment the progress of their reading endeavor, as well as invite friends to join the fun.
Children or parents can click on the previous months to access all the stories already published. On the reader’s profile page, a recurring reminder can be set up to ensure that the daily check-in to read is not forgotten.
Digital badges to reward daily check-in progress. Based on the total number of reading days completed and successfully checked-in, these badges will light up with the corresponding number of days.
English Name Generator
In China, English as a mandatory subject is asked to learn as early as 6 years old. Many parents and children expect an English name which matches their Chinese name's pronunciation. Therefore, I lead to develop a mini-app to help users generate English names.
This mini-app allows users to type their Chinese name and gender, and it automatically generates five candidate English names for them to choose.
This mini-app will recommend five English names. Users can listen to the pronunciation and read the meaning of the name, and then pick the one they like best. Take myself as an example, it recommends Hathaway.