2021 Google UX Design Certificate
Challenge
Design a tool to tutor adults in public speaking skills
Duration: August - September 2021
Type: Design for social good
Role: UX Designer
Fear of public speaking is one of the most common phobias, believed to affect up to 75% of the population. People are generally unenthusiastic about speaking in public, due to the fear of being watched and judged.
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Regular practice has long been recognized as the most effective means of fighting stage fright. However, aspiring public speakers often lack the time, the resources, or simply the courage to pursue a public speaking course. Additionally, professional rhetoric classes are in short supply in rural areas, so that the opportunities to learn and practice public speaking are generally limited.
Project Vision
Design an app that will provide a free, safe online space for users to learn and practice public speaking, at their own pace and independent of their physical location.
User Research Summary
In the course of my user research, I interviewed professionally active adults from a variety of backgrounds. Some of the research participants engaged in public speaking events regularly, but the majority of interviewees were people who never actively sought occasions to speak in public.
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I found that particularly the inexperienced speakers would welcome support in preparing for occasional, oftentimes spontaneous, public speaking events, such as those related to their work.
The accomplished speakers would by and large appreciate additional opportunities to practice and to mentor others in their public speaking skills. A safe, welcoming and supportive space emerged as the key precondition, regardless of the participants’ public speaking experience.
User Pain Points
Professional public speaking clubs are much easier to find in big cities, users from smaller towns face difficulties in finding onsite rhetoric classes
Service accessibility
Low motivation
By large, users dislike public speaking and they often lack the necessary will power to join and regularly attend the public speaking club meetings
Fear
Fear of exposure and fear of rejection drive the general distaste for public speaking.
Competitive Audit
I started the competitive audit by evaluating several free-of-charge public speaking applications. My focus was on the readability and general user friendliness of these tools.
The applications I tested featured public speaking lessons based on extensive written explanations. Though highly comprehensive, the descriptive nature of the lessons resulted in a textbook-like design that reduced the overall attractiveness of the app. Along with the self-study portion, I was also interested in potentially setting up public speaking practice sessions. In order to explore these, I joined the online meetings of two fee-based international public speaking clubs.
Starting the Design
I used paper wireframes to work out the best alternatives to the text-rich public speaking lessons present in the competitors' applications.
The goal was to reduce the amount of text by replacing it with appealing content that was easy to understand, without affecting the quality of the learning materials.
The selected paper designs were translated into digital wireframes and combined into a low fidelity prototype.
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To test the self-study portion of the app, I created one complete lesson on body language and used it for testing in a moderated usability study.
Refining the Design
In line with the findings of the study, I polished the original designs, adding an additional section on the user's learning progress to the high-fidelity prototype. The majority of descriptions and definitions had now been replaced by visual aids, resulting in a much more coherent and engaging user flow.
Accessibility
My goal was to make the rhetoric lessons attractive and understandable for a person completely new to public speaking.
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The self-study segment was divided into smaller, topic-driven sections for easier searching and selection of learning materials. The visuals incorporated in the app break the monotony of written content and help the user to identify the topics. Additionally, they support the user in mastering the public speaking techniques by allowing them to learn from both text and picture.
Why is this Important?
At the end of each lesson, I added a hero vs. anti-hero section.
This features the very same short speech delivered twice by the same speaker – once with and once without the application of the tips from the learning material. The idea was to help the users determine the benefits of each lesson by means of stark contrast and a real-life example.
