Week 4 — Blog

UX of digital interfaces

Week 2 of 2

Team

Digital environments often borrow features from physical ones to help people interact with computers. This project requires you to derive something physical from the digital. Your design must be experienceable physically and sensorially.

Research methods:
Love letter/break-up letter, artefact analysis

Aishwarya Saji
Amita Tulpule
Diya Naik
Drishti Takrani
Lindy Qin
Niki Marathia
Veronika Rovniahina

I attended a talk by Oliver Helfrich at Pentagram back in the summer, where he talked about how work and play feed into each other in his practice. I was inspired by how play shows in his visual language and how it invites a sense of joy through form, colour, and simplicity. The colourful hopscotch in Figure 6 from last week’s blog reminded me of Helfrich’s style, which made me want to explore playfulness with this creative direction as a guide.

Figure 1. Colour Trees by Studio Oliver Helfrich. Source: oliverhelfrich.com. Available at: oliverhelfrich.com/artworks (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

Figure 2. Forest by Studio Oliver Helfrich. Photograph by Elmer Driessen. Source: oliverhelfrich.com. Available at: oliverhelfrich.com/forest (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

When Morse code was used by the military, it was often abbreviated to shorten otherwise lengthier messages (Betts, 2022). Inspired by this history, we decided to design our hopscotch using Morse code abbreviations. The abbreviations we used, taken from Betts (2022), were translated into code using the table shown in Figure 8 of last week’s blog. Figure 3a shows how we incorporated these into a traditional hopscotch design. Looking at the Morse code below, can you tell which word is which?

SOS

Love/Kisses

Hope

Get lost!

... --- ...

---. ---..

.... .--. .

----. ----.

flick for colour

Figure 3a. Hopscotch outlines.

Figure 3b. Hopscotch outlines filled in.

We did a quick mockup of the hopscotch on the ground, and realised that it may end up being a little boring, but also, that we had not incorporated a lot of what we learned about Duolingo from our research.

Figure 4. Quick hopscotch mockup on the ground. Taken by Amita Tulpule.
Figure 5. Trying out a simple hopscotch game. Taken by Amita Tulpule.
We went went back to the drawing board, and came up with the idea of creating a circle. The circle symbolised the loop that users find themselves in on Duolingo, playing games without learning meaningfully. Figures 6-11 show different variations of a circular Morse code hopscotch.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

Figure 10.

Figure 11.

We tested this idea on the floor (Figures 12a-c), and realised that it was a bit flat, lacking the overstimulating energy of Duolingo.

Figure 12a.

Figure 12b.

Figure 12c.

We wanted to involve multiple users in our experience to make it chaotic and interactive, similar to Duolingo. The keywords “repetitive”, “competitive” and “hardcore” from our research were informing this stage of our process.

Figure 13. My mother is a sandwich abbreviated (MY MTHR = SNDW). Sketch drawn by Aishwarya Saji.

We decided to incorporate some of Duolingo’s identity into the design by using an absurd phrase from its language lessons. We replaced the military abbreviations with an abbreviated version of “my mother is a sandwich” and cut out dots and dashes. We then took our prototype outside to observe how others interacted with it.

Figure 14. Cutting out dots and dashes for our prototype.

Figure 15. Dashes from our prototype.

We invited people to pick a colour and try to complete the hopscotch any way they can. It was interesting to observe that, even though some of the symbols were spaced far apart, people still tried to complete the game. This felt true to how users keep engaging with Duolingo, even when bombarded with stimuli.

Figure 16. Getting people to test our prototype outside. Taken by Diya Naik.

Final concept

During this test round we realised that our abbreviated sentence, MY MTHR = SNDW, needed to be longer to make the game a little easier to play. To achieve this, we decided to drop the abbreviation and use the full words instead. Our final design looked like this:

Figure 17. My mother is a sandwich, our final design. Sketch drawn by Aishwarya Saji.

When we presented our project in class, the hopscotch extended through the doors, into the corridor, and back into the classroom. Using the space as part of the experience was our way of materialising the stimulating, competitive, and yet sometimes fun, digital environment of Duolingo.

Figure 18. The team with our final prototype.

Figure 19. The team playing with our final prototype.

Room for growth

Not doing a thematic analysis of our research meant that many of our findings lived largely in our heads. Although extracting keywords from our love letters and break-up letters was great, externalising themes would have helped make our research easier to apply.

When testing our prototype, we were overly generous in our evaluation of the experience. Being more critical during testing would have allowed us to assess how well the experience was really working.

Throughout our development process, we went back to the drawing board several times. This allowed us to create a concept that looked at Duolingo, hopscotch, and Morse code from interesting angles. However, challenging our concept until the day before our presentation meant we had less time to test the game mechanics. Ironically, we ourselves were stuck in a loop:

Our Thursday presentation made it clear that we hadn’t sufficiently considered how to get people to play. The rules weren’t clearly articulated, which resulted in confusion over what to do.

During our feedback, we heard it would have been beneficial to have explained the Morse code phrase within the experience. Although we explored ways to do this, we were unable to resolve it successfully. In future, I would focus on refining how the concept is communicated earlier in the development stage.

It was also noted that the experience felt more exciting than Duolingo itself. I think that gathering more user feedback might have helped us strike a better balance between the emotional tone of our design and its reference point.

If I were to revisit our design, I would take it to a playground to observe how children interact with it. I would also like to explore possible applications in textiles, such as a rug for soft play or an eccentric piece that sparks conversation.

Sources

Betts, J. (2022) Standard Morse code abbreviations. Available at: https://yourdictionary.com/articles/morse-code-abbreviations (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

Studio Oliver Helfrich (no date) Colour Trees. Available at: https://www.oliverhelfrich.com/artworks (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

Studio Oliver Helfrich (no date) Forest. Available at: https://www.oliverhelfrich.com/forest (Accessed: 24 December 2025).