Case Study #02: Glossa
Glossa: a modern search engine for the Ancient Greek lexicon
IxDF Course Project
Role: Founder / Product Designer
Team: Only me
Goal: Validate through user testing
Tools: Google Meets, Figma, Lovable, Antigravity
Outcomes: higher satisfaction rating than alternatives among 5/5 participants
Dec 2025 - Mar 2026
The Opportunity
Everyone who studies Latin and Ancient Greek complains about the usability of the field’s online tools.
The Problem
Problem Statement: a student of Latin and ancient Greek needs to read and understand ancient texts quickly and easily, so that she can prepare for reading lessons, essays, exams, and enjoy texts in their original language.
The Competition
I applied Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics to audit my major competitor, Perseus.
The usability scores of the key features:
Search function: 36/100
Parsing words: 65/100
Bilingual reading interface: 56/100
The search function lacks basic features:
no recent searches
no fuzzy search
no suggested queries
results are listed in alphabetical order, not by relevance
Other major deficiencies:
Difficult to navigate to text and parsing side-by-side view
Inconsistent with other readers which show modals for dictionary entries (without opening a new tab)
English and Greek texts are not alligned: difficult to compare, and easy to lose your place
Dated and cluttered visual design
No progressive disclosure
The Goal
My product can only succeed if it has both:
matching utility
vastly greater usability
User Research
From my network I recruited five participants including:
current undergrad students
current postgrad students
former students
I discovered what tools people currently use, and what frustrations they have.
The most prevelant pain-point was being unable to copy-paste polytonic Greek text from a scanned PDF.
Users expect to be able to select and copy text to search or save in their notes:
But often the texts provided are stubborn formats that don't allow selecting text:
The Solution
During ideation I explored ways to make selecting text easier.
But that would be a solution to the symptom, not the actual problem.
The Five Whys
The user is frustrated that they can’t copy text from a scanned PDF.
Why? Because copy-pasting into a dictionary search is so much faster than typing.
Why? Because otherwise they have to type polytonic Greek (i.e., with diacritics) into the search bar.
Why? Because the search function in the dictionary only shows exact results.
Why? Because the dictionary doesn’t have fuzzy search.
Competitor's search:
My proposal, fuzzy search:
Visual Design
The undergraduates prioritise speed, aesthetics, emotion.
The postgraduates prioritise niche features, authoritative brand.
Prototype #1
Try it out!
5/5 participants said they would switch to this product.
Differentiators:
Fuzzy search
More readable dictionary entry layout
Minimalist interface
Prototype #2
Try it out!
Next Steps
Conduct usability testing on the high-fidelity prototype.
Update visual design to match the "academically authoritative" brand identity.
Before you go…
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