LikeChinese-Breaking the Ice in Learning Chinese

LikeChinese-Breaking the Ice in Learning Chinese

Hao, C.

Sonneveld, M.H. (mentor)
Van Mourik, F. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Design for Interaction

2013-12-16

The Chinese language is increasingly getting global attention due to the rapid development, especially the huge growth of the consumers markets in China. However, for the majority of western people, the Chinese language, especially the Chinese symbol: characters are something that is interesting but unreachable. From the designer’s experience, it seemed that there is a huge iceberg standing in between westerners and Chinese characters. This project is therefore initiated to identify the common difficulties that westerners have when encountering with the Chinese characters and to explore how design can help encouraging westerners to get to know it. “What is the “ice” for western learners in learning Chinese and how to break it?” was stated in the beginning of this project. Literature and observation studies were performed to analyze the current situation of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Besides, an in-depth user research including interviews and group session with inexperience westerners and experienced Chinese learners was conducted in order to answer the research questions. Then, the findings guided to define the specific design goal of the project, which is to design a product that inspires westerners to get to know Chinese characters by creating a new writing experience. A list of design criteria, together with the feedback received from users, was used for idea generation and final concept development. LikeChinese, the final design, offers users a new way to meet the most spoken language in the world: Chinese. It includes an inviting flyer, a website and a mobile application. The application as the main design outcome of this project uses users’ initial impression of the Chinese language to let users explore characters in a creative and artistic way. LikeChinese is based on the 214 most frequently used ‘components’ of characters, instead of focusing on thousands of full characters. The meanings of these parts of characters are used to frame the stories that Chinese characters tell and thereby reveal the common sense behind the characters. The application also allows users to create their own stories (with their own made-up characters), which makes the user build connection with characters and shares their thinking through the Chinese language. Users can share their invented characters and the stories they created to whom have the same interests through an online platform. It will create a sense of belonging and inspiring. The design was evaluated based on the user testing. The results showed that the design made users realize they knew more about Chinese characters than they originally thought and unconsciously feel closer and more fascinated with Chinese characters. That is to say, the design goal has been reached.

interaction design
user experience
App design
Chinese characters
Chinese as a forgien language

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fe5f6989-e726-4ba7-8934-fa4f167c0199

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Hao, C.