When Associate Professor of Graphic Design Xinran Hu decided she wanted her American-born daughter to learn Chinese, she struggled keeping her daughter interested in the many Chinese characters. Hu remembered being a child herself, learning the characters by writing the lines over and over until she memorized them. Frustrated, Hu began a two-year process of finding a better way to learn Chinese.
After nearly two years of research, design, testing and approval, Hu launched her app “Discover Chinese” on Dec. 2, 2018.
Discover Chinese helps teach language learners more than 100 Chinese characters through six lessons. There is no background in Chinese needed to start. Hu said the app is unlike any textbook, and makes learning fun, reasonable and meaningful.
Chinese is an imagery-based language. Hu decided to use this as a way to teach through illustrations and images instead of using a textbook that requires learners to memorize the modern characters alone. Rather, users associate the Chinese characters with images relating to the words meaning.
When using the app, users tap on their chosen lesson and are taken to a screen with three categories showing an image, the original Chinese symbol for the word and the modern character. Then users select one image from each category based off their similar design and see if they guessed the correct word.
After successfully matching the three together the app takes users to a new screen to practice writing the character.
Hu said she wanted to create a way of learning that was not taught to someone, but where the user has to learn and discover for themselves.
After the initial idea, Hu’s process involved a full year of research into the first symbols of Chinese and the modernized Chinese characters. Hu worked with linguist and other professors to check the accuracy of the early Chinese.
Next Hu said she had to create her first chapter. Limiting her to a certain amount of characters, Hu said she had to decide which characters would be the best to teach.
After researching and finding the best characters to teach a new learner, Hu worked with senior graphic design and illustration major, Betheny Swartzentruber, to create illustrations to go along with each word and help associate the way the characters looked.
Swartzentruber had previously shown interest in learning the Chinese language after rooming with an international student from Taiwan.
Swartzentruber said she began working on the illustrations at the start of 2018 and finished in November.
As she began sketching, Swartzentruber said her style was too similar to the ancient symbols.
Swartzentruber said she relied on her previous art classes to complete the illustrations, especially the principles from her design classes like similarity and leveling and sharpening.
After the design process was completed, Hu tested the app on students from the Chinese Academy of Southern Indiana and the university.
Associate Professor of Graphic Design Xinran Hu smiles with her app.
Sean McDicken helped test the app last year in Hu’s class as an extra project for the Honors Program. The senior graphic design major said he has been learning Japanese which has similar characters to that of Chinese.
McDicken said it is important to show the original Chinese characters because it shows the transition of the language through time and how the past relates to the present symbol.
Hu said the app is growing beyond the university and Indiana, with downloads from Australia and France and nearly 20 downloads every week.
Hu encourages anyone to try out the app, hoping to receive feedback. If the app receives positive feedback in helping users learn the language, Hu hopes to create more lessons and characters for users to learn.