Redesigning song lesson and navigation systems

Lingotune is a language-learning with music app. By utilizing music with language lessons, learning language becomes a much easier and more memorable task.

The current song lesson screen looked complete when it wasn't. Many users assumed the first card was the whole library, missed the rest, and left.

How might I make the depth of the library visible from the very first screen — so users know there's more, and feel confident finding it?

I reviewed user test sessions clip by clip and found the same patterns repeating: users saw the first song card and assumed that was the whole library and users tried swiping instinctively.

My cognitive science background pointed me to research on mental models — how people navigate interfaces based on patterns they've seen before, and how to design with those patterns instead of against them.

II looked at how apps like Apple Music, Discord, etc. presented browsable content — patterns users would already know before ever opening Lingotune.

I created an affinity map to group recurring themes and user behaviors, which helped me synthesize what was really happening beneath the surface. Patterns appeared quickly, such as users relied on familiar mental models, struggled to see key actions, and often lacked feedback and affordances.

Taking my insights from research, I consolidated what a typical user journey would look like for a user that was using the current system. I mapped a typical user's journey through the current system — not to jump to solutions, but to understand where the confusion built up and what emotional weight it carried.

I quickly sketched several directions, powered by my research synthesis, before landing on the one I wanted to pitch. The team greenlit it, and I moved into higher-fidelity design

Side-peeking cards signal, before the user does anything, that more content exists. This directly solved the biggest pattern from testing: users assuming the first card was the entire library.

Pagination dots tell users where they are in the sequence. Paired with the peeking cards, they make the scroll feel oriented: you always know how far you've come, how much is left, and that there's more waiting

Horizontal swipe matches how users already browse music and content-browsing apps. Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music all use horizontal carousels for discrete items and reserve vertical scroll for feeds. Aligning with that existing mental model reduced cognitive load and avoided conflicts with page-level scroll.

My redesign shipped in the next release, and was an incredibly rewarding moment.

I didn't have access to post-launch metrics, but if I had, I'd measure success three ways: task completion rate (do users successfully start a lesson?), drop-off at the song lesson screen (is the retention leak closed?), and songs browsed per session (are users confident enough to explore?)

The bigger takeaway: the best UX often isn't inventing something new. It's noticing the mental models users already carry into your product — and designing with them, not against them.