product Design
Basix is a language learning app with corresponding flashcards that teach Spanish. Focusing on immersing the language learner in Spanish-American culture, connecting with other users, and learning with context, like how we learn our first language, is how Basix helps to teach. The app has six main functions: it provides activities for the user to utilize their newly-learned words, Latin-American recipes, a map to find nearby Spanish stores, a community page to ask questions or post photos from your activities, digital versions of the cards to expand their use, and a personal profile to track what you have mastered. Basix makes it easy to not memorize the meaning of a word in another language but understand it in relation to how you view the world around you. We know you’re busy, so whether it’s a night in and you’re looking for a new recipe to try or looking to explore your city, Basix makes learning a language functional and fun.
Mission
To connect language learners to one another and encourage immersion in culture and community.
Vision
A community of collaborative, passionate language learners constantly seeking growth through context and immersion.
Branding
Process
The Design and Visual Communication Capstone is split into two semesters. In the Fall of 2021, I was tasked with creating a company focused around healthy cities for the DVC Entrepreneurship Showcase. To me, a healthy city is one that provides for its people and motivates them to communicate respectfully with each other. Influenced by my job as a receptionist at a nail salon, I originally wanted to create a way for non-English speakers to access places in the service industry that used their language. Seeing clients come in and connect with technicians that spoke Spanish was heartwarming. I am privileged to never understand the isolation and courage it takes to exist in a society that revolves around a language other than my own. I imagined some sort of database that allowed people that do not use English as their primary form of communication to know of places they could visit that they could utilize their preferred form of communication. In a larger sense, it would include as many languages as possible as well as Sign Language and Assistive Technology for blind people.
This idea proved to be a bit grandiose. Instead, I decided to start at the root of the problem, and provide a resource for people to learn Spanish. This project was my main focus throughout the entire semester and it was one I struggled a lot with. After scaling down from a database of linguistically diverse restaurants, salons, cafes, and the like, I experimented with flashcards, a board game, and a workbook before deciding on an app. The app works with corresponding flashcards that teach the user Spanish.
Duolingo and Babbel are two of the most popular language learning apps on the market and while they are similar, I knew I needed to differentiate from them dramatically. That’s why Basix is community centered. Its purpose is to not only teach Spanish, but to encourage the learner to incorporate Spanish in their daily lives and immerse themselves in it. The brand’s focus is collaboration, immersion, and context- the reasoning explained in the infographic.
The app consists of six main features, hence the name Basix. There is a profile page to keep track of progress, community page to write posts and see what others are doing to learn, a make page to immerse in the culture, an act page to provide ideas for different activities to aid in learning, a find page to locate nearby businesses that advertise they have Spanish speaking employees, and a learn page to expand upon the flashcards. While it is a language learning app, it focuses on the user’s local community and encourages them to get out and speak.
