EF Study Buddy

A smart speaker that teaches kids English

EF Study Buddy is a next-generation smart speaker that brings English language education to life. Designed specifically for kids aged 3 to 6, it delivers contents relevant to their language skill level and creates conversational opportunities for kids to use English naturally outside the classroom. Based on characters from EF's Small Stars Course, Study Buddy manifests a distinctive personality and expresses its emotions through its lively voice and a pair of animated eyes. It encourages young learners to immerse themselves with course-related songs, stories, and games through the interaction of card scanning, voice command, and tactile buttons. The contents can be updated manually or automatically based on the user's progress and the gamified experience of using NFC cards and inbuilt proprietary speech testing engine help to reinforce English learning. With the wellbeing of kids paramount, twin monochromatic OLED eyes were used to allow for visual feedback while preventing exposure to blue light.

Released in 2020
ID Lead: Tien S. Huang
Recognitions: iF Design Award 2020: Winner; MUSE Design Awards 2020: Gold Award

OPPORTUNITY

As a leader of an off-line English learning service provider, EF wanted to take the idea of “Practising from Home” to expand its business and create opportunities for increased exposure to English for young learners (3-6 years old) after class. By adapting its proprietary Speech Scoring Technology, Branded IP and User-centred Design Process, the company’s first smart speaker was born.

INITIAL EXPLORATION

FOCUSED DIRECTION

EF owns a family of cartoon characters that is used extensively throughout its courses and these characters were used as references for this smart speaker project. The owl character was chosen in the end based on usability (bigger eyes that fit for bigger screens) and practicality (a more suitable form to adapt). And the eyes size was informed by a hand-picked off-the-shelf OLED component.

A line-up of how design evolved by time based on engineering limitation and user feedback

CMF SPECIFICATION

PROBLEM-SOLVING DESIGN DECISIONS

4 METHODS TO TRIGGER CONTENTS & ACTIVITIES

USER TESTS & FEEDBACK

Five user tests were carried out during a period of one year with the SUS (System Usability Scale) score over 90 in the latest test. We received positive feedbacks in general and all the parents and kids loved the form and character of Study Buddy as well as the idea of replacing screen-based interactions with voice and physical interactions. We discovered that the card-swiping experience worked extremely well with this group of users aged 3-6, and observations showed that these kids were proactively using Study Buddy on a daily basis for 5 minutes on average during the allocated user testing period. Findings from the user tests contributed to the finalization of how we designed our content and interaction experience.