Lillian Ip-Koon - Let's Yum Cha!

Let's Yum Cha!

Product Management • Product Design • Animation • Sound

Did you know that every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker?

Let’s Yum Cha! is an interactive mobile game designed to encourage young children to engage with the Cantonese language, while celebrating the richness of Cantonese culture.

This innovative product was created to address a key challenge: the limited availability of Cantonese-language content for young children in non-Cantonese-speaking communities, particularly during the crucial period of early language development.

User Research

Conducted surveys and interviews with over 200 British-Chinese families to understand barriers to Cantonese learning.
Identified key challenges, such as the lack of engaging resources and traditional methods failing to retain children's interest.
Identified families' goals for a modern and interactive approach to language learning.
Prioritised creating a solution tailored to young learners, considering developmental and cultural needs.
Used research insights to shape a gamified app designed to make learning fun and intuitive.

Initial concept & Feedback

Created several interactive prototypes of a Cantonese-learning game, ranging from low to high-fidelity.
Obtained early user feedback with focus groups with paper prototyping.
Conducted usability tests with mid and high-fidelity prototypes with a focus group for continuous refinement.
Created original animations, sounds, and voiceovers to feature in the app, enhancing the app’s immersive experience whilst reinforcing language concepts.
Focused on building an intuitive, child-friendly interface that allowed independent navigation.
Conducted market research through surveys to assess the demand for this type of app, evaluating its potential and marketability. The findings indicated strong interest, validating the product's viability and confirming that pursuing its development was worthwhile.

Agile Approach & MVP Development

Adopted an agile methodology, scaled down the original game design, and focused on delivering a simpler, more manageable MVP.
Prioritised core features and avoided over-complicated mechanics, ensuring a focused and incremental development process.
A roadmap to release the product in phases, refining and expanding it based on user feedback and technical capacity.

Marketing Strategy & User Engagement

Focused on social media engagement to build a direct, organic audience connection, posting original animations weekly that embed fun Cantonese cultural facts with language learning.
Engaged followers by encouraging user contributions and developing a sustainable posting format.
Developed a website to host updates, Cantonese resources, and gather email sign-ups.
Coached a volunteer to develop content writing skills to support ongoing content.
Grew a strong social media following, with over 3000 followers across platforms and 250 newsletter sign-ups, increasing visibility for the game launch.

First Iteration and Feedback

Facilitated co-design workshops with several volunteer designers to develop the narrative, ensuring the game's story and characters were integral to the learning experience.
Explored mini-game concepts through paper prototyping, and through evaluating the design complexity, cultural relevance, and development work, chose to start with a food-ordering game involving dim sum as a learning tool.
Mapped out detailed user flows and game flows to guide the development process and ensure cohesive gameplay.
Created a mid-fidelity interactive prototype, using Protopie, to create the first two levels as a demo in order to gather feedback through usability tests and user feedback through a public survey focused on our target audience.
Refined game mechanics and user interaction based on feedback.

Development and release

Collaborated closely with the developer, delivering game flow documentation and detailed interaction logic, alongside audio and visual assets.
Refining the first iteration, the design was developed further, including updated full colour artwork and character design, a main menu, a level selection screen, a section for revising learned phrases, and 11 levels for players to unlock and play through.
Identified bugs over several rounds of testing. Once we had a stable version, it was first tested with our volunteers. After making further improvements, additional testing was conducted with 50 users who signed up as beta testers across Android and iOS devices.
The MVP release launched in December 2023, along with a feedback survey to continued evaluation.

Project Summary

Designed and developed Let’s Yum Cha!, an interactive mobile game aimed at preserving Cantonese language and culture by engaging young children in non-Cantonese-speaking communities through gamified language learning.
Conducted extensive user research with over 200 British-Chinese families, identifying barriers and cultural needs to inform a child-friendly, intuitive app experience enriched with original animations, sounds, and voiceovers.
Led iterative prototyping and usability testing, from paper sketches to mid-fidelity interactive demos, refining game mechanics and story elements through co-design workshops and continuous user feedback.
Adopted an agile MVP approach, focusing on a simple, phased development of core features—including a food-ordering mini-game with dim sum—enabling incremental releases and improvements based on user input.
Implemented a targeted marketing strategy, building a strong social media following (3,000+ followers) and newsletter base (250+ sign-ups) through regular cultural content, alongside a community-driven website, contributing to the game’s visibility and successful MVP launch in December 2023.

Reflection

A key challenge in Let’s Yum Cha! was balancing engaging game mechanics with the developmental needs of young children. Early prototypes were too complex, prompting a shift to an agile approach that focused on simplicity and prioritised core features through iterative prototyping and usability testing.

Building a strong social media presence and community early on also proved invaluable—not just for visibility, but for gathering ongoing user feedback. This project reinforced the importance of adaptability, user-centred design, and close collaboration with the target audience to create meaningful, age-appropriate learning experiences.

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