1LANGUAGE

Building the Worlds First Smart Language

1Language is a community and initiative that aims to radically change the way we can communicate with both each other and things across cultures and borders. To achieve this, the 1Language community develops and maintains the smart language (protocol) of this new (semantic) internet and makes it openly and freely available for everyone to use. 1LANGUAGE is a “smart language” and first of its kind. A smart language is just like a traditional language that you can speak, read or listen to, yet it is composed out of small algorithmic parts that make it do things that go well beyond the abilities of traditional languages. 1LANGUAGE can translate a language into other languages and understand questions and reply to them in almost all frequently spoken languages. It also facilitates machines, products and things to speak with humans and vice versa.

The Client.

Whose Problem Needs Solving? 

Summary.

Overview of the Project

Under Non-Disclosure Agreement

Some of the details in this case study may be vague to protect the client's intellectual property.

To create an easy to use and easy to learn portal for the 1LANGUAGE community to come together to define and agree upon the definitions of words within the semantic language. Because the concept behind 1LANGUAGE is vast and complex and can quickly be overwhelming it was important that the concept be communicated through effective story telling, that the designed portal be easy to use and that users retain their knowledge of the system. New users would need to be walked though how the system works and recurring users would have to be catered to so they could jump right back in and pick up where they left off.

    Services.

    • Design Vision.
    • System Thinking.
    • User Research.
    • User Testing.
    • Consulting.

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      Deliverables.

      • Interactive Prototype.
      • Implementation guide with tips for building the prototype.
      • Detailed Research Reports.
      • A Custom Landing Page for 1LANGUAGE.

        Outcomes.

        • A comprehensive data model of the 1LANGUAGE Semantic Web.
        • An in-deapth understanding of the elements at play in building smart languages.
        • Well Tested Interactive Prototypes and Demos.
        • Determined the building a semantic smart language is indeed feasible.

        Design Challenges.

        What unique challenges did this project present?

        Designing new systems often bring with it new and exciting challenges.

        Designing for Emerging Technologies.

        One of the main challenges 1LANGUAGE project is to design a system and portal for a concept that is so new and innovative it has little to no real world comparisons. How can we design a brand new web based system that is both innovative and yet somehow feels familiar. how might we make it easy to use and easy to learn? The answer to these questions lie in expertly reviewing and analyzing somewhat comparable websites and online communities. learn from them what worked and what didn't; why these things did or did not work and what we can learn/emulate from them to achieve our goals. This helps to keep us designers grounded in systems that feel familiar and build on existing online paradigms as opposed to designing a completely new (and alien) online environment.

        Explaining the concept.

        User testing a concept this complex and different is a tough challenge. In order for us to accurately test our users we first have to ensure that we can explain our concept in a simple; succinct and effective manner. Therefore a part of this project involves fine tuning and translating the story of one language in a way that the average person can both understand what it is and understand why we need 1LANGUAGE today, and why we need to build it up as part of the commons rather than a proprietary service. Doing this enabled us not only to create a consistent story for the landing page; but to communicate the concept more effectively to the other parties we were working with; such as PNA group and DPD.

        Feasibility Concerns.

        Working with new and innovative technology always brings with it unique and imposing challenges. 1LANGUAGE was certainly no exception to this case. one of the major obstacles facing 1LANGUAGE was the feasibility barrier. We needed to determine if the idea of a semantic web, smart language, and meta data,( accessible in each language and machine readable), was even possible from a data perspective. To do this we would have to work together closely with the semantic data modeling team at PNA, where my role was to provide UX insights into data modeling: what points of the model will connect with the users? when does it (the system) need input and when do the users need input.

        Global Pandemic.

        At the end of the project; the world became gripped by the corona/COVID-19 pandemic. People were told to avoid contact; schools were closed to the public; and many other drastic changes came sweeping over the nation. It was at this exact time that i was getting users together for user testing at the HHS; making use of the tools and devices of the lux lab. Because i suddenly could no longer do this I found myself forced to pivot towards digital and remote testing. This came with advantages and disadvantages. User testing would have to proceed with a very different nature than was expected but it enabled us to test our project asynchronously: ie have people use the system without us there to guide them. This gave a lot of insights into the problem, and into community building.

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        The Research.

        What Key Insights Were Discovered During the Research Phase?

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        Whale uses drives its names from "Whales"—a.k.a. players who spend a great deal on in-app purchases

        Whale Users.

        When we look at comparable communities such as Wikipedia, Glosbe, Wordnet and more, we learn about the types of users who post and contribute to these online communities. Looking at the users we can see that there are users who make 1-10 posts a week and there are users who make over 1000 posts/edits a week. I quickly identified these users as "whale users". Because of the large scale of words and content that needs to be define at the start of the project, me and the project client quickly decided to focus on these users as our target audience.

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        Consistent Language Use.

        When working with a semantic dictionary and linguists as community members, jargon is unavoidable. That being said, time and careful consideration should be take to identify which type of jargon cannot be avoided and which can be. In order to make the system as easy to use and as easy to learn as possible special attention must be placed in being consistent with our use of language icons and images Features and functions should be whenever possible self explanatory and the user should always know what is going to happen if they press on a button before they press it. That being said the system should also be forgiving of mistakes.

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        Enable Guidance.

        Throwing too much information at once to the user can be very distracting and often overwhelming. Because the system and the underlying theory is hard to understand special attention should be placed in the design not to overwhelm the users too much by putting too much information on the screen. Users will not be able to earn underlying concepts as easily if the website layout is confusing, use signposts and tooltips to help the users understand the website, and use help sections whenever possible. The onboarding of the community will be dependent on how easy the system is to learn. To that end a tutorial must be worked on toe explain to people what is expected of them; and what they can expect from the system and from us; in essence; tutorialize the concept as a whole (crowdfunded definitions; consensus models; community wallet and badges etc...) but also the concepts of how to define, request, review and edit definitions (and translations).

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        Provide Overview.

        One of the key features that enables whale users to make as many edit as the do is an overview of their tasks: what needs to be done: where is attention needed: what was recently added and what needs revising. For them its important to gain an oversight on this on one page. it enables them to quickly dive in and pick up where they left off or to find new work that needs to be done. This played an important role in the designing of the dictionary portal's overall functionality and design.

        Solutions.

        How was the Challenge Overcome?

        Design Vision.

        To create an easy to use and easy to learn portal for the 1LANGUAGE community to come together to define and agree upon the definitions of words within the semantic language. Because the concept behind 1LANGUAGE is vast and complex and can quickly be overwhelming it was important that the concept be communicated through effective story telling, that the designed portal be easy to use and that users retain their knowledge of the system. New users would need to be walked though how the system works and recurring users would have to be catered to so they could jump right back in and pick up where they left off.

        Insight Based Features

        The following four features exemplify the four key insights mentioned in the research section. While not being anywhere near all the features and concepts designed: these 4 features give an astute look at how the insights were used to achieve the aforementioned design vision.

        The Sidebar.
        Linking Actions.
        Task Screen.
        Working with Tabs.

        The Sidebar.

        The need for the design to be minimal and learnable despite its complexity led me to think about how the UI and placement of the system should reflect the systematic working of the protocol; but also become a standard pattern on which the users can learn the system and the system can present the information. this lead to the development of the sidebar as it is used in this portal. throughout the site and process of defining a word: the system will often need information from a previous phase or step. defining a word? which proposal are you defining for? reviewing a definition? what was the definition you are reviewing? etc.... the sidebar provides users with this relevant information from the previous step: keeping them in range of the information they need to perform a task at all times.

        On this screen here we can see an overview of the create a task screen where the user fills in the details about the task they want to create. On the sidebar section on the right we can see information about creating a task. 
        On this screen we can see the layout for creating a proposal for a definition of a word from a task. On the sidebar section we can see the task details screen: this is information that the user who created the task (previous screen would have filled in.  This information is relevent to the user at this time and helps to prevent them from forgetting the information and having to go back
        On this screen we can see where a user creates a review for a proposal. On the sidebar we can see the information that the user will need to complete this: such as the actual proposed term and definition they are reviewing: the argumentation and explination of the original task creator: and links to other reviews 

        Linking Actions.

        An important part of catering to whale users is providing a consistent and easy to user flow. keeping this in mind; I designed the UI to quickly and easy link users to their previous tasks. From user testing I know that this choice made it a lot easier for my users to learn how to use the portal. As mentioned before there are phases to defining and deciding on the definition of a word. Often the one phase must be linked to the previous phase. While the system does this automatically; it was very helpful to our test users to link a phase to the previous phase they were working on. This greatly improved their understanding of how the system works.

        On this screen here we can see an overview of the create a task screen where the user fills in the details about the task they want to create. Once filled in the user clicks the green button to submit the task: this then takes them to the screen to view their task (to the right).
        Here we can see how it would look when viewing a task. this is how the previously created task will look to all users once submitted. Notice the buttons on the bottom to link the user to the next part of their workflow; either create a proposal for this task; or subscribe to the task. From user testing and discussions with the client we have decided to scrap the subscribing feature. 
        Here we see the screen the user will be presented with if they click create proposal for this task in the previous screen. By doing this the task details section on the left will automatically be linked to the proposal; otherwise users must select which task they are creating a proposal for. This process repeats itself for reviews on proposals (not shown here) 

        Task Screen.

        While the task overview screen layout may be daunting for new users: for advanced users and whale users it provides a much needed oversight into all the different elements at play for a specific task. Because later we hope to implement a monetary reward: this feature was designed to be able to quickly determine where your efforts will be best spent. As can be seen from the screen: a contributor (user) can get all the information they are looking for in relation to which tasks they want to work on from one screen. Here they can see what the reward for a task is: what its current highest rated proposal is at: the second highest: the average deviation for the ratings: and the time left.

        For example: the task for creating the concept of Chemsity as it relates to science has 4 proposals: highest rating of 9 and second highest rating of 8 and only 1 hour left. But the task for camel in the context of a ship raising device has a much larger deviation and a higher reward: also with only a few hours left. The user can then conclude that this task is much more lucrative than the other one: and its better for them to put their efforts here.

        Working With Tabs.

        Discovered while researching existing comparable sites and communities; I decided to implement the tabs system as a novel way of preventing users from getting lost on the website: and to help them keep track of where they have come: as a sort of breadcrumbs system. This feature proved to live up to its expectations during the user testing: as all users found this feature helpful in navigating. Furthermore, enabling the system to remember a user's tabs through cookies will make it much easier for these users to pick up where they left off when returning to the system thereby encouraging our users to become recurring users; and helps turn even the average user into a whale user.

        On this screen the user can search for terms as they are defined in the 1Language . Searching for a new term will open up a new tab next to the active search tab. 
        Here we can see what such a tab would look like: showing the results of their search: opened on a new tab next to the original search tab. 

        Testimonial.

        Jeroen's work has been impressive. Deriving deep insights from several sources and good practices, translating this into logic, datamodels, back and front end designs with a holistic approach is not something to be expected from students without substantial working experience in a wider variety of disciplines. Moreover, the 1LANGUAGE assignment has been challenging to say the least....In the end, Jeroen delivered far more than what I expected, with a lot of guidance and design ideas to bring the project into its first implementation phases, while solving many open and outstanding issues. -Floris Kleemans (CEO and Founder Focafet)

        Conclusion.

        The work done at 1LANGUAGE was a resounding success. Within the team I was instrumental in helping to develop the fundamental framework of the system as well as thinking about how the community would interact with the system: how the system will deal with trolling and negativity, how we can incorporate financial incentive for our community and helped to develop the eventual data model proving the viability of our approach. While still very much in its infancy as a project, I will continue to work with 1LANGUAGE till it reaches its full potential.

        Links to Outcomes

        Some of the outcomes in this case study may be vague or missing to protect the client's intellectual property.

        1LANGUAGE Landing Page.

        Learn about the 1LANGUAGE Protocol.

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        A Link for the Interactive Prototype developed in Sketch and Invision. This prototype was the main focus of the project, combining all the research, concepts, insights, and learnings together into one design. Furthermore this interactive prototype made it much easier to further test and refine the concept as it acts as a powerful tool to explain the concept.