Chau Vu

Context:

No Online Resources Available to Learn Sign Language in Healthcare?

There has been a lack of interpreters and VSL education available to the public, as well as limited access to learning resources for VSL. Organizations like CED offer offline lessons or private online lessons, but these are often difficult to access widely due to their closed nature, high cost, and lack of organization into modules. As a result, VSL education is not popular. Especially in healthcare, without adequate VSL interpreters or accessible learning resources, deaf patients may struggle to communicate effectively with their doctors, leading to potential misunderstandings, misdiagnoses, and inadequate care.

Problem:

Who is being affected? Millions of Vietnamese deaf people and healthcare professionals do not have access to VSL learning resources.

1. There have not been any unified resources to learn VSL: chaotic and messy materials scattered across different platforms.

2. There are no opportunities for iteration and practice, as the resources usually include only pictures, with no videos provided

2. Millions of Vietnamese, including deaf people, their families, VSL enthusiasts, nurses, or doctors, do not have access to formal VSL education, especially training in healthcare scenarios.

In an effort to create an online platform to support these special needs for VSL education, I gain deeper insights into the deaf user's point of view by conducting user research and surveying 76 deaf people and healthcare caregivers. I summarized the survey results using a empathy map:

Narrowing down a framework to build the design of the website, I built a user personna one of our key demographics: A young student with hearing disabilities:

Based on my user research, I built the 3 principles that guide the design of VieSign, called VIM for short, for the UI design of the website:

Zoom-In: Low-Fidelity to High-Fidelity Prototypes: Three Question Types per Section

Taking a closer look at the design components in our app flow, we have incorporated four types of exercises in each learning module to enhance engagement and memory retention. Below are the Figma ideation drafts leading to the wireframe version:

Type 1 - Comprehension Question: For this type of question, we aim to introduce the concept in an intuitive way by presenting a video of the sign language teacher using a new word or phrase. We then ask whether the user understands it or not. If the user selects "no," we iterate the question.

Type 2 - Reiterating Text-based Question: For this type of exercise, the question is a word or phrase that has been taught using the comprehension question above. Users have to choose the video that corresponds to the text question. We aim to help learners iteratively retain their knowledge through this type of question.

Type 3 - Matching Conversational Quotes: For this type of exercise, we ask students to synthesize what they have learned through the previous questions. They need to understand the video, remember words, and choose the suitable matching signs between the 8 flipping cards. We aim to keep the lesson fun and interactive by using a countdown timer for this exercise.

We utilized the MERN stack to implement our design. The source code of the project can be found at this: Source code

Besides developing technical skills in software engineering and user research, working on VieSign brought me incredible friendships, memories, and so much more. This project has been, and will always be, a defining experience that inspires me to continue creating applications that have a positive impact on people’s lives.