Excited by the promise shown in the survey that the idea would work, Haripriya and I began interviewing potential users to dig deeper into the mind of the learner. We talked to a total of 18 Japanese language learners between the ages of 15-46 years and heard stories of their journey of learning the language, goals and motivations, challenges and their relationship with music.
We then proceeded to create an affinity map of all the stories and observations from the user interviews.
Fun fact: We did this activity in 3 places- Starbucks, Rangoli metro arts center, and Matteo cafe. Each time we pulled out our sticky notes and began sticking them on the table or wall, we got kicked out. We tried to explain that they don’t leave marks but they just wouldn’t listen. So we just had to improvise. Luckily, Haripriya had brought a bunch of newspapers, which we used to stick on instead.