Chatti

I designed Chatti for language learners who know the vocabulary but freeze up when it's time to actually speak. The app focuses on building confidence through low-pressure conversation practice that feels approachable instead of overwhelming.

Overview

Role
UX/UI Designer, responsible for research, ideation, wireframes, prototype, and testing.

Timeline
14 weeks

Tools
Figma

Understanding the Problem and Finding the Solution

Most language apps build your vocabulary. Chatti builds your confidence to actually speak.

Through my research, I discovered that many adult language learners struggled with speaking confidence and felt stuck using apps that focused heavily on vocabulary drills. While these tools helped users learn new words, they often failed to provide meaningful opportunities to practice communication in a low-pressure environment.

This problem mattered because confidence plays a major role in language retention and long-term motivation. When learners feel nervous about making mistakes or lack opportunities to apply what they’ve learned, they are more likely to lose momentum and stop practicing altogether.

To address this challenge, I designed Chatti, a language learning app for beginning-to-intermediate learners. Chatti focuses on helping users build confidence through guided speaking practice, interactive lessons, and real-world language scenarios. By creating a supportive and engaging learning experience, the app encourages consistent practice and helps learners move beyond memorization toward meaningful communication.

Research

To understand the problem space, I analyzed four major competitors (Duolingo, Babbel, Rosetta Stone, and Busuu) through a full SWOT analysis and found that speaking confidence was a weak spot across all of them. I also conducted user interviews and used affinity mapping to identify patterns, which pointed to fear of making mistakes as the biggest barrier to practice. You can view the full competitive analysis linked here.

To validate this with real people, I conducted user interviews with adult language learners at varying experience levels. I then organized the findings through affinity mapping, which helped me spot patterns across motivations, challenges, and preferences. A few things came up again and again. For example, people were motivated by personal interests like K-pop, anime, or relationships, but their biggest barrier wasn't a lack of knowledge. It was fear of making mistakes. That single insight shaped the entire direction of Chatti.

From there I developed personas, POV statements, and HMW questions to frame the design problem. The question I kept coming back to was: how might we create a low-pressure speaking experience that lets learners practice without the fear of judgment? That became the foundation for every design decision that followed.

Personas

Participant #1

Typist Clerk
Prefers learning through immersive, media-driven content

Participant #3

- Physical Therapist
- Prefers learning through a structured and goal-oriented style that focuses on real-world applications

Participant #2

Behavioral Therapist
Prefers learning through visual methods, auditory methods, and media driven content

Participant #4

A busy LA Assistant Designer
Prefers learning through reading/writing and in-person discussion

Task Flows

Create an Account/Log In

Step #1: Sign up or create an account
Step #2: Choose language
Step #3: Set up goals
Step #4: Dashboard

Lesson

Step #1: Start lesson from dashboard
Step #2: Select lesson
Step #3: Complete lesson
Step #4: Give feedback
Step #5: Progress is saved and tracked

Design

The Logo

The name Chatti comes from the word chat, but the mascot is what brings it to life. Whales are one of the few creatures on earth known to sing as their primary form of communication, sending complex, melodic calls across vast distances of ocean. That felt like the perfect metaphor for a language learner: someone using their voice to reach across a cultural and linguistic divide and genuinely connect with another person.

The whale lives inside a speech bubble, which grounds the mascot directly in the act of chatting. It's a simple visual pun, but it works! You instantly understand what the app is for. The wordmark uses a soft, rounded letterform to keep the brand feeling approachable and low-pressure, because one of the biggest barriers to language learning is the fear of sounding silly. Chatti needed to look like a safe space to make mistakes.

The Color Palette

Every color in Chatti's palette was chosen to support the emotional experience of learning a new language,which can feel exciting, frustrating, and vulnerable all at once.

Blue forms the foundation. Across cultures, blue consistently reads as calm and trustworthy, which matters when you're asking someone to step outside their comfort zone. A range of blues (from a deep navy to an airy powder) keeps the UI feeling stable and approachable without being clinical.

Yellow adds energy. Language learning should feel like play, not homework, and yellow brings that brightness and joy into the interface without overwhelming it. It shows up as an accent, giving the app moments of warmth alongside the cooler tones.

Green signals growth. Every lesson, every new word, every conversation is a step forward, and green carries that meaning of progress and momentum. It's used intentionally to reinforce the feeling that you're always moving in the right direction.

The neutrals, which are deep black-blues, grey-blue, and a near-white, tie everything together and give the expressive accent colors room to breathe. The result is a palette that feels cohesive, intentional, and genuinely aligned with how the product wants users to feel.

Since confidence and motivation were recurring themes in my research, I focused the first prototype on helping learners feel that their experience was tailored to their needs from the start.

The onboarding flow included a short questionnaire that asked users which language they wanted to learn, how they preferred to learn, their motivation for learning, and their personal goals. This allowed Chatti to gather information that could be used to create a more relevant learning experience. After completing onboarding, users were taken to the home page and then into their first vocabulary lesson, where they completed multiple-choice exercises while tracking their progress through a clear lesson indicator.

By combining personalized onboarding with a simple lesson experience, I aimed to create an approachable first interaction that would encourage learners to continue practicing.

The Wireframes

At this low-fidelity stage I was focused on information hierarchy by figuring out how many steps users could handle in the onboarding flow before dropping off. I kept it rough on purpose so I could move fast and throw out ideas without getting attached.

With the structure in place, mid-fidelity was about refining the details. One key fix I made here was standardizing the onboarding UI — I noticed that the 4th screen used square selection boxes while every other screen used rectangular ones, which created an inconsistent and confusing experience. I unified them so users could move through onboarding without second-guessing how to interact. I also used this stage to plan the layout more intentionally, mapping out the placement of images, text, checkboxes, and other elements before moving into high-fidelity.

High-fidelity is where Chatti came to life visually. I finalized the branding system by locking in logo, the color palette, typography, and iconography. Then, built out the core UI components: CTA buttons, progress indicators, and checkboxes. The homepage came together here as well, pulling everything into a cohesive first impression of what using Chatti actually feels like.

Testing

To evaluate the experience, I conducted usability testing with five participants. The primary goals were to determine whether users could successfully complete the onboarding questionnaire and navigate through their first lesson without confusion.

All participants successfully completed both tasks within 2–4 minutes. While the overall flow was easy to understand, testing revealed opportunities to simplify the welcome page, improve instructional clarity, and make progress indicators easier to interpret. These insights informed the final revisions to the prototype.

Reflection

What insights did you learn from this project?

Going into this project, I assumed the biggest challenge for language learners was vocabulary. But my research completely shifted that assumption. Confidence, not knowledge, was the real barrier. That single insight changed how I thought about almost every part of Chatti, from the color palette to the supportive tone of the copy.

I also learned that the emotional tone of a product is itself a design decision, not just a branding afterthought. The fear of making mistakes wasn't something I could solve with a feature alone. It had to be addressed in the way the whole app felt: soft, rounded, low-pressure, forgiving.

On a more personal level, I learned that documenting my process is its own skill, separate from actually designing. After my mentor's feedback, I realized I had been treating this case study like a checklist of deliverables instead of a story about a decision-making process. Going back through and asking "does this explain the why?" for every section taught me that good case study writing is its own kind of design work.

What would you do differently?

If I were to start over, I'd prototype the speaking practice feature much earlier. It's the core idea behind Chatti, and I ran out of time to fully bring it to life within the project timeline. I'd also want to design more deliberately for the moment right after a mistake happens, since that's the exact point where users are most likely to give up.

I'd also push my usability testing further. All five participants completed the onboarding and first lesson successfully, but I'd want to test with more rounds and track more specific metrics, like hesitation points or where users second-guessed themselves, so I could measure confidence the same way I was designing for it.

Future Opportunities

If I were to continue developing Chatti, I'd prioritize building and testing the speaking practice feature, which is the core idea behind the app that I wasn't able to fully prototype within the project timeline. I'd also want to explore how the app handles the emotional moment when a learner feels embarrassed after making a mistake, since that's precisely when users are most likely to give up.

If this were a real product, the next step would be partnering with a speech recognition API to test low-stakes speaking practice in real conditions. I'd also want to explore lightweight social or accountability features, since my research showed that personal motivators, like K-pop, anime, or relationships, were what actually got people to practice. Connecting that motivation directly to a speaking session could be the bridge between vocabulary knowledge and real confidence.

Have any questions about this project?

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