Fluent City is an online language learning startup specializing in the conversational teaching method using personalized lesson plans.

Custom learning management software (LMS): Fluent City’s LMS was designed to streamline teachers' workflows by enabling them to log and send lesson summaries, establishing a central repository for lesson content. The ultimate goal was to develop an automated lesson plan generator powered by the content curated from this feature.

The challenge

Limited feature adoption and 33% churn rate: By August 2020, Fluent City faced a plateau in new user acquisition and increased churn rate. Customer feedback revealed that students felt the business fell short in fulfilling the promise to offer hyper-relevant and personalized lesson plans and content. 

To increase retention, the team formulated this question: How might we increase usage of the lesson summary feature?

Project goals

• Increase feature adoption of the lesson summary feature.

• Discover materials covered in lessons for better curriculum development.

• Maintain existing branding and styling.

My role

Research, UX/UI design

timeline

2 weeks (40 hours)

Discovery calls

Key findings from interviews with 15 active Fluent City teachers:

Diving further into pain point #3 revealed that there was an issue with discoverability: 4 out of 8 teachers did not know where to find the lesson summary feature

Framing the opportunity

Drawing on insights uncovered during discovery, we crafted problem statements to focus on the key issues that hindered adoption of the feature.

ideation

Rapid ideation technique to generate possible solutions: With tight deadlines, we conducted a rapid online brainstorm to generate quick, actionable solutions. From this, we prioritized several low-to-mid effort changes that would have a high impact:

Key features such as the ones listed below were chosen as high priority due to their low-to-mid effort and the high impact it would create.

• Support attachments: Allow teachers to send attachments to students for homework assignments

• Actionability: Conditional CTA on lesson cards with incomplete lesson summary fields

• Improved information architecture: Reconfigure internal system so information is organized by student, not lesson

• Discoverability: Direct access to the lesson summary page from the online calendar 

03 - Final Designs

Seven key changes were implemented in the LMS:

04 - Conclusion

Although timeline constraints prevented us from running usability tests, we closely monitored key success metrics post-launch:

• Usage of the Lesson Summary Feature:

  • Pre-redesign: 1%. Before the redesign, only 1% of teachers used the feature.

  • Post-launch: 17%. Our goal was to reach 10% in two weeks, and we surpassed that—17% of teachers adopted the feature.

1. Satisfaction Rate: 85% of teachers reported that the new design was easier to use, exceeding our target of 80%.

Reflections

Operating under a tight timeline required us to adapt quickly. Key learnings from this project include:

1. Set up regular check-ins with the team: We underestimated the complexity of the file attachment feature, which led to delays. Clearer communication would have helped manage scope more effectively.

2. Design consistency: The platform lacked a design system, leading to inconsistent user experiences. Fluent City needs a unified design library to streamline workflows and improve usability.

3. Real-world constraints: We had to prioritize deadlines over a complete design process, skipping usability tests. This taught me that flexibility is essential in fast-paced projects, and sometimes relying on institutional knowledge can be a valid trade-off for speed.

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