HongBao

Getting Started: 1st page of HongBao. HongBao's main mascot, "Mao Bao" (or Cat Bread). Make an account to save progress & chat with users.
Profile/Avatar Section: Pick your original HongBao avatar to represent yourself, completing goals to unlock new ones.
Lessons: Menu: View the lesson plan. Play the lesson to learn the new vocab/grammar, and complete the quiz to move onto the next lesson.
Lessons: Scene: General formatting of a story choice-based lesson, which has plots from previous lessons. Unlock choices to complete.
Lessons: Review Section: Within the story choice-based lessons, to unlock a new choice, users have to learn new vocab, as seen here.
BaoBao Translate: HongBao's translator section, where you can signify the specific audience you're talking to. Would use Translator APIs.
Chat with Users Section: Connect with other HongBao users to practice your Cantonese in a more colloquial setting. Includes audio.
Full HongBao app prototype and initial sketch.

Inspiration

Despite growing up in the diverse city of New York, as two Cantonese people, we felt we lacked both resources to learn and people to connect with in terms of speaking Canto. Even though our schools offered Mandarin classes, translators with Mandarin, and classmates who spoke Mandarin at home, Cantonese was always much harder to integrate into our daily lives outside of our families. Living with immigrant parents and family members who speak Cantonese, this disconnect became all the more apparent over time. Thus, we were inspired to create an app that not only teaches the basics of Cantonese, but allows users to speak in a more colloquial setting, whether that be through an AI-based or user connected chat system, or learn new terms in a story-based choice game that more closely mimics real life. Moreover, we added decorative aspects and themes that relate to our Cantonese culture. For example, “hongbao” which means red envelope, a gift of money handed out during Lunar new Year, and “bao” or bread, a pun with “hongbao” that we based our mascots on.

What it does

Our HongBao app provides a fun learning approach to a new language, specifically Cantonese. Built for ABCs (American-Born Chinese), while also geared towards expanding the audience for Cantonese learners due to the vibrancy of the language, through our story-based lesson plans, users enjoy a game-like platform that is encouraging through both visuals and audio. Through our reward system based on streaks and lesson completion, users can unlock different characters ("Baos"). HongBao also hosts an AI-powered translator with innovative formality indicators that help curate translations according to the user’s selected target audience. Lastly, community is an important part of HongBao that also serves as a chance for users to practice with newly learned vocabulary and accurately pronounce phrases through the tone corrector feature from our chat feature that connects users with AI-based conversations and with real-life users.

How we built it

We used Figma to create the prototype of our app, and used procreate for some of the art. Because we think the target audience (American-born Cantonese-speaking people) is the most important aspect of the app, we wanted to focus on the interface and visuals of the app the most. The art and aesthetics were also a significant part of our process, since it makes the app all the more appealing to the audience.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges we ran into involved the character creation of our HongBao to allow for marketability towards our target audience, while encompassing our vision of the cheerful and fun spirit of Cantonese. We also attempted to incorporate AI to curate our translator and chat functions, and will ultimately make it a future goal of ours to fully program our app onto Android Studio and continually develop our app visually and interactively.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Coming from Cantonese families, we are proud of the impact that HongBao may have not only on our target audience, but also within our own personal relations. Our app solution to making language learning more approachable and more tailored to the users incorporates family feedback such as how current translators are not curated to specific tones, depending on who the user is addressing. We have recorded accounts in these degrees in which a translator’s wording had been deemed offensive or inappropriate for certain situations, and our app aims to minimize these misunderstandings. HongBao is fulfilling and representative of our mission to encourage Cantonese as a vibrant language that is fun, backed by a family-like community.

What we learned

We learned how to utilize Figma to fully visualize our HongBao project and design characters through Procreate. We also gained an understanding of how to implement GenAI, groqlabs, and APIs for future projects.

What's next for HongBao

In the future, we’d like to develop our prototype into an actual app and create more story-based lessons and develop the AI-chat system. We would also like to expand into other languages, but our primary focus is Cantonese.