Kanoko Nagai Designer Portfolio
Educational Game UI/UX Design
Igoe
Role
UI/UX Designer
Project Overview
Igoe is an English learning app designed for children aged 6–10. It helps kids learn English through engaging and interactive activities while addressing a common challenge faced by parents. Many parents want to support their children’s English learning but may lack the language skills, time, or resources to provide consistent guidance. Therefore, Igoe is designed to encourage independent learning, allowing children to learn and play on their own while still receiving a high-quality educational experience that helps improve their English skills.
Final Product
These main screens are the result of many iterations and revisions.
Pop Up Screens
Tasks to Solutions
During the research phase, I narrowed down four core problems to focus on solving in the design process.
Usability Test
Usability testing helped me identify key areas for improvement. Here are a few examples of how I revised the design based on user feedback.
1. Timer vs Progress Bar
User Feedback:
“Does the progress bar show the remaining time for the current question? I can’t tell what the timer at the top and this bar are each supposed to represent.”
Revision:
To prevent confusion between the timer showing the remaining time for the current question and the bar showing the overall test progress, we have visually separated the two elements. By placing the progress bar in an independent header area, it is now much clearer that the bar represents the overall test progress while the timer represents the remaining time for the current question.
2. Decorative vs Interactive Elements
User Feedback:
“Can I tap this illustration (the suitcase near the roadmap)? Or is it just part of the background?”
Revision:
An element included in the background as a narrative decoration was causing confusion, as users found it difficult to tell whether it was interactive. To resolve this, we reduced the size of the illustration and moved it closer to the character. This ensures it is recognized as part of the scene rather than an interactive element.
Research and Interviews
User interviews revealed two key insights. First, parents often have limited time to support their children’s learning due to work and household responsibilities. Second, while many parents want to help their children learn English because they feel school education alone is not enough, they often lack the confidence to provide effective support.
Ideation
I used rapid sketching as a completely intuitive space to generate as many layout ideas as possible. By focusing on volume over perfection, I was able to exhaust all my obvious ideas and uncover more creative, playful possibilities for the interface before locking down the layout.
Next Steps
This project reinforced the importance of designing based on user needs rather than assumptions. User feedback proved invaluable in uncovering usability issues and guiding design improvements. Moving forward, I would like to explore more inclusive features that were absent from the products analyzed during my competitive audit.
Motion Exploration with Rive
Using the characters from this app, I carried out a separate exploration of interactive motion design. While the intended primary device differed and the results do not fully align with the final product specifications, working with Rive helped me develop a stronger understanding of state machines and further refine my skills in interactive motion design.
Deliverables
UI/UX Design/ Prototype/ Animations