Tag : Intern Project Date : Jan 2017 - Apr 2017
Category : UX Design, Collocation Search Team : Yeshuang Zhu, Yunxing Liu
Overview
Academic writing in English has long been a challenge for English as Second Language (ESL) speakers. Due to a lack of English proficiency, ESL speakers tend to make classes of errors different from native English speakers in writing. In the aspect of writing behavior, ESL speakers frequently turn to dictionaries or search engines. Previous work has been done to address the problem of ESL writing with a corpus supported. We present Esoda, an online system working as both a query tool and a recommender to assist ESL researchers in academic writing. Users can easily create expressive and accurate queries through an example-based query interface.
My Role
In this project, I mainly worked on designing the collocation searching feature and graphic design. I also took charge of the iteration of the system based on users’ feedback and branding strategies. Furthermore, I helped with front-end development by refining the website with the latest version of design.
01
PROBLEM
Discovery, concept
Simple query expression
of existing corpus query tools
Overlook the semantics
of user input
Lack recommended collocation
of different types of phrases
Concept
Collocation recommender based on professional corpuses
Interactive query tool to suggest collocated word of different types
02
OUTCOME
Design solution, implement, graphic design
​Phrases Collocation
On the main page, type in the word or phrases which you want to see collocation recommendations. Esoda will provide collocation examples of native speaker's academic paper. When you encounter some unfamiliar phrases, searching in Esoda can provide you with the natural saying of English.
Professional
​Sentences
Esoda has integrated traditional English dictionary's function with interactive query functions to improve ESLwriter's writing experience. Through the collection of dozens of professional English thesis corpus, Esoda provides academic use examples of the query words.
Different
Collocations
Search with query words, Esoda will show the result of different collocation forms: (subject-verb) / (verb-noun) / (preposition). each collocation form has a variety of vocabulary collocation to choose from. Searching for a single word, and you will get all types of collocations .
Professional Corpus
Esoda has divided the professional corpus into 10 categories. Users can choose their own domain or the general domain for both academic search and common search
Searching
Tutorials
There is also a tutorial page to instruct users how to use this system. On this page, it gives users about the function Esoda can provide and instructs users on how to use the interactive functions to search different types of collocations.
Hifi-prototype
Graphic Design
