Ling Chatbot App by Qian Wan is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2023 A' Design Award in Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design Competition Category.
IronMobile· 2023
Ling Chatbot App
by Qian Wan
Client: Qian Wan
A' Design Award Winner in Mobile Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #144682The Design
About Ling Chatbot App
Ling is an educational chatbot mobile application that provides reliable learning resources about equity, diversity, and inclusion to help Chinese international students to learn and prevent discrimination and harassment. The app also connects users to their school’s trustful case report sources. Through humanized conversational interaction, the app makes people talk about difficult topics easier.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Ling Chatbot App is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Ling Chatbot App is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Ling Chatbot App is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The inspiration behind the creation of Ling came from the urgent need to address the rising racism and violence against Asians, particularly Chinese international students, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These students, who come from a distinct culture and are studying abroad, often face discrimination and harassment but may be less sensitive to it due to their unfamiliarity with the local culture.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
The goal was to create a mobile-based educational chatbot that could provide real-time support, learning resources, and guidance on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) to help these students identify and prevent discrimination and harassment. Ling aims to bridge the gap in knowledge and provide a humanized approach to addressing these challenging experiences.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
I intend to actively promote Ling to raise awareness among educational institutions, student communities, and relevant stakeholders about the importance of addressing racial discrimination and providing support.
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to addressing racial discrimination through Ling Chatbot App has earned recognition with an A' Design Award - could you share the personal experiences or observations that inspired you to create this educational platform specifically for Chinese international students?
The inspiration for Ling really came from observing the unique challenges that many Asian international students, particularly Chinese students, face when studying abroad. During the pandemic, I saw a troubling rise in racially motivated aggression against Asian communities. In particular, international students—already adapting to new academic and social environments—were especially vulnerable. Many students I spoke with felt isolated, unsure of how to respond to incidents of discrimination or subtle biases, and sometimes were even unaware that what they were experiencing was a form of harassment.
The user interface of Ling Chatbot App employs a conversational approach to discuss sensitive topics - what led you to choose this humanized interaction style, and how did you develop the dialogue patterns to ensure both empathy and effectiveness?
I did it intentional. We’re dealing with sensitive and deeply personal topics, so the interaction needed to feel as human and empathetic as possible. A chatbot format lets users feel like they’re having a private, supportive conversation rather than completing a sterile questionnaire or navigating through a typical app.
Given the complex nature of equity and inclusion education, how did you structure Ling Chatbot App's information architecture to make learning resources accessible while maintaining engagement through the chat interface?
I kept the information architecture very streamlined. Instead of overwhelming users with long lists of articles or resources, we embedded bite-sized educational content directly into the chat experience. When users bring up a question or concern, Ling responds in a way that’s both informative and conversational
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Ling is a mobile based educational purposed chatbot that provides real time inquiry functionality and learning resources about equity, diversity, and inclusion to help Chinese international student to identify and prevent discrimination and harassment that happened to them. The app also connects users to their school’s trustful case report sources.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The app is designed for iOS.
- Tags
- Social Equity, Chatbot, mobile app design, User experience, Information Architecture
- Production Technology
- I used Miro board to synthesize research findings. The interface design was done through Figma, Sketch, Figma, and Illustrator.
- Design Challenge
- It was hard to initiate such a difficult topic with people who experienced racial discrimination. Sharing my own stories that resonate with people helped me drive the conversation. I also found that much existing research has been done only on post-discrimination experience, but it doesn't cover all the needs. People often didn't realize when things happened, not to mention to look for help in time. After mapping out their journey, I realized that lack of knowledge leads to those consequences.
- Research
- I interviewed 11 Chinses international students who are currently studying in the USA and who had experienced racial discrimination. I mapped their journey, mood, and reaction with the user journey to identify the design opportunity. Then I did literature research to learn how to measure racial discrimination systematically.
- Inspiration
- COVID19 has driven racism and violence against Asians. Chinese international students who are coming from a very distinct culture study abroad, and are new to a culture. They are less sensitive to racial discrimination when it is happening to them. Although those aggressions are often subtle, they can be just as harmful to health and well-being.
- Project Duration
- The project started in June 2021 in LA and finished in August 2022 in Seattle
- Operation Flow
- The first time users will be asked to connect with their student account so that the app will provide the most easy to access and trustful resource for the students. When users are not sure if they experienced racial discrimination, simply by chatting with Ling, she will use a conversation based approach to identify the racial discrimination types step by step and provide support by connecting users with their school’s EDI department.
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