Uptone

Learn a new language by listening to your favorite songs

Role

Project Manager

Brand Designer

Interface Designer

Team

Chloe Au-Yeung

Soojin Kim

Timeline

Sept - Nov 2023

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Rhino 3D

Keyshot

Uptone

Learn a new language by listening to your favorite songs

Role

Project Manager

Brand Designer

Interface Designer

Team

Chloe Au-Yeung

Soojin Kim

Timeline

Sept - Nov 2023

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Rhino 3D

Keyshot

Uptone

Learn a new language by listening to your favorite songs

Role

Project Manager

Brand Designer

Interface Designer

Team

Chloe Au-Yeung

Soojin Kim

Timeline

Sept - Nov 2023

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Rhino 3D

Keyshot

Name

Team

Chloe Au-Yeung

Soojin Kim

Role

Project Manager

Brand Designer

Interface Designer

UX Designer

Timeline

Sept - Nov 2023

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Rhino 3D

Keyshot

Team

Chloe Au-Yeung

Soojin Kim

Role

Project Manager

Brand Designer

Interface Designer

UX Designer

Timeline

Sept - Nov 2023

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Rhino 3D

Keyshot

Project overview

Uptone is a music-based language learning platform designed to enhance the language learning experience for aspiring language learners, making the process fun and engaging while listening to your favorite songs.


As project manager, I was responsible for supervising the team and oversaw that deadlines were met properly. I also played a part in facilitating user testing, designing the interface and brand, and conducting research.

Learning a new language
can be frustrating

Learners that stop learning a new language are not uncommon nowadays. The progress of learning may be difficult, facing challenges such as time constraints, lack of quality resources, and demotivation.


Traditional learning methods are boring and repetitive, and learners are not able to practice or perfect their pronunciation to sound like a local speaker.

Written Hello in English and Japanese

Where learning a new language is made easy

Follow along to practice listening skills, learn vocabulary by song sections, and translate the lyrics to understand the deeper meaning behind them.

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Engage in conversations around the world

Connect with native speakers on another level to get a better grasp on pronunciation, dialect, and slang words.

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Unleash your inner superstar

Uptone’s AI utilizes speech recognition in order to help you work on your pronunciation skills through karaoke.

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Name

Become a fluent speaker

Compact. Modern. Sleek.


Combining the basic concepts of a projector and a speaker into one, the Uptone+ karaoke machine lets you practice what you've learned with friends.

Where learning a new language is made easy

Follow along to practice listening skills, learn vocabulary by song sections, and translate the lyrics to understand the deeper meaning behind them.

Name

Engage in conversations around the world

Connect with native speakers on another level to get a better grasp on pronunciation, dialect, and slang words.

Name

Unleash your inner superstar

Uptone’s AI utilizes speech recognition in order to help you work on your pronunciation skills through karaoke.

Name
Name

Become a fluent speaker

Compact. Modern. Sleek.


Combining the basic concepts of a projector and a speaker into one, the Uptone+ karaoke machine lets you practice what you've learned with friends.

The solution

Making learning a language fun through music

Where learning a new language is made easy

Follow along to practice listening skills, learn vocabulary by song sections, and translate the lyrics to understand the deeper meaning behind them.

Name
Name

Engage in conversations around the world

Connect with native speakers on another level to get a better grasp on pronunciation, dialect, and slang words.

Unleash your inner superstar

Uptone’s AI utilizes speech recognition in order to help you work on your pronunciation skills through karaoke.

Name
Name

Become a fluent speaker

Compact. Modern. Sleek.


Combining the basic concepts of a projector and a speaker into one, the Uptone+ karaoke machine lets you practice what you've learned with friends.

Gathering user research

We collected 52 survey responses and conducted 8 one-on-one interviews. After organizing all of our feedback and affinitizing our data points, we identified 4 different opportunity areas to explore.

1

Lack of prioritization

Learners end up prioritizing other tasks and push learning to the side without attempting to pick it back up.

2

Resources aren't extensive

People feel like they can't apply what they've learned to real-life situations because they aren't taught local slang and dialects.

3

Learning felt unexciting

Lessons felt tedious and repetitive, causing users to lose motivation easily.

4

Users felt not in control of their learning

Most felt restricted to learn within a certain amount of time and are unable to set their own learning pace.

The idea in mind

From all the research we had gathered, we asked ourselves the question: how might we create an enjoyable and interactive learning experience that is adaptable to their schedule and offers practical resources?


We proposed a solution that incorporates music into the language learning process by integrating popular songs in foreign languages that users can learn from in an engaging way.

Hands playing piano
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Our direct competitors struggled with user retention

To look into this idea further, we decided to research existing language learning music platforms and compare their strengths and weaknesses. We analyzed three different apps that implemented music into learning a language.


We found that none of them provided feedback on pronunciation and lacked interactivity to keep users consistently engaged in the product.

Visualizing our concept

During this phase of the project, we worked on expanding our concept into fully interactive prototypes. We put our focus into a mobile platform, which our users would be mainly interacting with and would provide them with songs to learn a language to.


We also wanted to design a web onboarding experience for people to learn more about the app. Furthermore, we had the idea of creating a karaoke machine that can be paired to the app where users are able to practice their pronunciation skills and sing.

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App Prototype

Mid-Fi Website

Website Prototype

Karaoke prototypr

Karaoke Machine 3D Model

Testing our design

We tested 6 different users and conducted 2 rounds of testing, giving them a set of tasks to navigate through our app prototype.


In doing so, we were able to utilize the success metrics for each task and identified the areas for improvement.

Making pop-ups less abrupt

The bluetooth connection pop-up felt very rushed and unclear to most users so we redesigned it to be easier to understand.

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Giving more context to users

Establishing a clearer and structural visual hierachy helps users easily navigate through the platform.

Name

Adding more safety features

Some users were concerned about their online safety, so we added a report system.

Name

Making pop-ups less abrupt

The bluetooth connection pop-up felt very rushed and unclear to most users so we redesigned it to be easier to understand.

Name

Giving more context to users

Establishing a clearer and structural visual hierachy helps users easily navigate through the platform.

Name

Adding more safety features

Some users were concerned about their online safety, so we added a report system.

Name

Making pop-ups less abrupt

The bluetooth connection pop-up felt very rushed and unclear to most users so we redesigned it to be easier to understand.

Name
Name

Giving more context to users

Establishing a clearer and structural visual hierachy helps users easily navigate through the platform.

Adding more safety features

Some users were concerned about their online safety, so we added a report system.

Name

Style guide

We defined a clear style guide in order to create a cohesive and consistent experience that aligns with our identity and platform's message.

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Final design

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Uptone Karaoke Machine
Uptone Screen
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Project takeaways

Context is crucial

It is imperative in helping the user reduce cognitive load and make faster decisions.

Even the tiniest details need a lot of thought

Paying attention to consistency keeps the design cohesive and overall predictable.

Communication is key

Making sure that the team is aligned fosters a collaborative environment, leading to more innovative and effective designs.