Overview
A language learning app for South Asian immigrant kids, combining card-based AR scanning with culturally-rooted interaction design.
The Problem
The apps existed, but lacked
cultural immersion.
85% - Parents speak native language at home
75% - Kids still default to English
65% - No engaging cultural resources exist
50% - Parents can't teach consistently
Who I designed for
I came in through the parent's door.
The design had to go through the child's.
How might we design engaging cultural learning experiences for South Asian immigrant kids in the U.S. that foster positive parent-child engagement and reduce acculturation stress?
Learn
Children explore their native language through
bite-sized lessons, storytelling, and interactive games.
Play with friends
Learning becomes social with “Friend Mode,” where kids can team up, challenge each other, or collaborate on mini-games.
Earn Rewards
Every correct answer, completed level, or streak unlocks points, badges, and fun digital rewards.
The two ideas that made it LANGO
Physical meets Digital
Lango ships as a complete learning kit.
Physical Devanagari flashcards come in the box. The child holds a card, points the phone/iPad camera at it.
One doesn't work without the other.
Buddy and Lagori
Buddy is the Gurukul guide. Lagori is the level logic. Both are South Asian in their bones - not in their color palette.
Onboarding
Playful animations pull the child in before a single word is taught. Signing up is optional - they can explore first, commit later.
Learn and Generate your own stories with AI.
Recognise letters. Match sounds. Learn words. Each stage earns the next. Cards are laid out on screen. The child matches them in order. A story builds itself from what they place - word by word, in their language.
Where Lango lives on an iPad
After user feedback, one thing was consistent - parents preferred their kids learning on an iPad over a phone. So Lango lives on iPad. A child holds a card from the kit, points the camera at it.
Onboarding
Playful animations pull the child in before a single word is taught. Signing up is optional - they can explore first, commit later.
Who I designed for
Language isn't just communication. It's the thing that keeps a family whole across generations.
No app fixes that on its own. But the right one can make a child reach for a word they'd otherwise let go.
That's what Lango was designed to do - not teach Hindi, not preserve culture as an abstract idea, but make one kid in one living room feel like their language belongs to them.
That felt worth designing for.
Decomposition and Scheduling
The AI breaks the assignment into steps and suggests a timeline. One overwhelming deadline becomes a concrete list of small wins.
Focused Resource Grounding
Course resources surface automatically alongside the task. No tab switching, no context switching — everything needed stays in one place.
AI Prompted Resource Retrieval
The platform finds relevant resources so the student doesn't have to. Research stays inside the learning environment, not scattered across browsers.