When the block becomes close to the above sentence a grayed-out area becomes visible and only then offers a signifier to the user of a possible block location. It’s up to the user to figure out the constraints of dragging the block to the correct position. Users are asked to Drag the highlighted block of text to a position in the sentence already created above. Directly after, a ‘Check’ text in a navigation bar becomes highlighted and signifies that the user can now click the text to find out if the correct answer was chosen.Īfter the initial lesson, the user is asked to test what he’s learned and a ‘Drag it to the right place’ page follows the initial lessons. The page asks the user to choose a block indicated by the phrase at the top of the page.

The only ‘clickable’ areas on the screen physically constrain the user from proceeding to advanced lessons until he/she tests out of beginning lessons.Įach lesson page offers four illustrated image blocks captioned with a Chinese character that represents each image below each block. The partial block allows for the discoverability of more lessons by scrolling, pulling the screen down offering the natural mapped area above. One block seems to disappear off the top of the screen. In the center of the screen, the user is confronted by several blocks that contain lessons alternately positioned upon a white background separated by an amber-colored border. The navigation bar at the bottom of the screen offers clues of grayed-out ‘Review’ and ‘Me’ icons with text to signal that there are more sections to the app other than the highlighted ‘Learn’ section where the user currently appears. Eventually, the guest will arrive at the LingoDeer home screen displayed with the application’s name.

When LingoDeer is opened, an arm waving cartoon deer with glasses greets the user. Although the app offers the same structure and layout of lessons for all three languages, I will focus on the Chinese language. Designed by a team of language teachers, LingoDeer is a free mobile app that offers to teach three Asian languages (Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese) by way of reading, listening, speaking, and writing lessons.

Lingodeer sign in