Let’s yum chat!
A mobile learning app by Cantochat
Duration: May 2021- present
Role: Product Design, UX/UI design, Illustration, Animation, Sound Design
Website: www.cantochat.com
A continuation of the “Cantochat” project, it has evolved into a platform that aims to create engaging Cantonese learning resources within the UK for a young audience. It celebrates the Cantonese culture and raises awareness of the difficulties of learning Cantonese, including the lack of media, support, documentation, and the difficult nature of the language.
Cantochat currently provides weekly social media posts sharing Cantonese culture and interesting language facts using sound, illustration, and animation. We are also in the process of developing a mobile game, “Let’s yum char”. A fun and interactive way to learn dim sum names in Cantonese, “Let’s yum char” is a narrative-based mobile game that follows the story of a young girl and her parrot in their mischievous adventure!
Kick-off meeting
Cantochat evolved from a university project. It brought in a lot of interest from the Cantonese community, which motivated me to invite several friends to bring the project to life. This started with a kick-off meeting where we explored our skillset, created an initial plan, and drafted a roadmap for the coming year.
We decided to split our efforts and focus our skills on two main areas: product development and marketing.
Read more about the original project.
Product development
We reflected on the original game design and due to the complicated mechanics, we concluded we need to take a more agile approach and focused on creating a simple MVP version of the game.
Story writing workshop and brainstorming
The research indicated the integrated narrative aspect is one of the most important factors to be included and one that sets the game apart from other games on the market.
I held a story-writing workshop with the team to first explore and expand the story behind the Cantochat game. This helped the team think of creative ways to brainstorm mini-game ideas.
Post-workshop, the team developed some of the characters and explored maps.
Mini-game ideas
Working with the other designers, we explored several mini-game ideas with paper prototyping and decided to develop a food-ordering game. Through several iterations and considering the simplest game mechanics, this resulted in a “dim sum game”. In the process, we also considered how it would fit in as part of a larger game where the protagonist would explore areas to learn different vocabulary.
User flow + Game flow
A user flow was created to support the creation of the prototype. This included mapping the assets related to each screen.
When working with the developer, a game flow was created to help express the logic of the game.
User flow
Game flow
Prototype + feedback survey
An interactive prototype was created using Protopie and released as a game demo in January 2023. This was released with a survey to gain feedback from the audience.
The survey was designed to get general feedback and interest for the mobile game design, but also to get a better understanding of the demographics of our current audience base, the age range who’d want to play the game and thoughts on using this type of game to engage with Cantonese culture.
Marketing
Website
A website was created to host all our outputs in a centralised platform. Including latest updates, information about Cantochat, and plans to host useful Cantonese-related resources and articles. It also provides a place for our followers to sign up for our newsletter, so we can keep a primary database of our audience.
Social media
With little marketing expertise between us, we attended some startup talks at the beginning of the project and understood the importance of building an audience alongside our product. We quickly decided to commit to posting weekly, incorporating language learning and sharing Cantonese culture as the main objectives of our social media channels. We brainstormed ideas and create monthly to annual plans on posts.
We explored various ways to format our posts, including tagging other influencers and inviting young audiences to contribute to the artwork of our posts. We identified the pros and cons of these approaches where sustainability was a factor and finalised a format where each post will always include:
Covering topics from a different category each week (see brainstorming diagram).
The caption is written in English and includes a Colloquial Cantonese translation.
A phrase or song that is spoken clearly.
Chinese writing and jyutping to accompany the phrase or song.
An animated highlight of each word as it’s spoken for clarity.
Accompanying original illustration in a recognisable style, same as in our games.
Bright colours that appeal to a young audience.
This has built a strong following for Cantochat and benefitted the release of our first demo.
Reflection
The project has received great feedback from the audience, which was reflected in direct emails, survey feedback, and social media comments. Linguists have also started using the project as an example in lectures about preserving Cantonese culture and language. The social media following has slowly grown to over 2000 followers with 250 newsletter sign-ups.
The greatest challenge with the project is the commitment available. As all team members have full-time jobs, the progress is slow and lacked stability.
The next steps for this project include:
Completing and refining the current game so there is more gameplay with incresed levels
Commitment from a developer to work on an MVP release of the game
Explore other mini-game ideas and release further demos
Consider funding options to accelerate growth, such as fundraising campaigns and using demos to support this