Transforming a conversational AI web app into a mobile-first learning experience that adapts to each user's interests, progress and learning needs.
I transformed a conversational AI language learning web app into a mobile-first experience designed to make personalisation visible, progression meaningful and practice more relevant to each learner.
Mila AI could personalise conversations and generate learning content, but users couldn't clearly see how the experience adapted to them.
Redesigned onboarding to connect users' goals, proficiency level and interests with their learning experience.
Designed a progressive roadmap that starts with three learning units and reveals new ones based on user performance and preferences.
Designed a review experience that helps users identify what to revisit and when additional practice is needed.
The redesigned experience made Mila AI's adaptive learning model more visible and easier to understand. In exploratory usability testing with existing web app users, participants completed tasks in less time and demonstrated a clearer understanding of the product's value.
Mila AI was originally a web-based language learning platform built around AI-powered conversations.
Rather than following a predefined curriculum, users could engage in conversations that evolved according to their interests, preferences and learning progress.
However, this adaptive experience was not clearly communicated through the product. Users were presented with multiple topics from the beginning, but the interface did not explain how those choices would shape their learning journey. The AI was central to the product's functionality, yet its ability to personalise the experience remained largely invisible.
I led the end-to-end UX and UI design of the iOS app, rethinking how users discover the product, understand their progress and continue learning over time.
Mila AI's underlying learning experience was designed to evolve with each user, but the interface did not make this process sufficiently clear.
I identified three key experience challenges.
Design opportunity: Make the product's intelligence visible. Instead of simply improving navigation, the opportunity was to make the underlying intelligence of the product visible through the interface.
The goal was to make Mila AI's adaptive learning model tangible throughout the user journey. Rather than presenting AI as a hidden mechanism, I designed an experience that communicates personalisation from the first interaction, makes learning progression visible and connects performance with relevant practice opportunities.
The strategy focused on three key moments: how users establish their learning preferences, how their learning path evolves over time, and how the experience helps them identify what to practise next.
The onboarding flow was redesigned to establish a clearer connection between user preferences and the learning experience that followed. Rather than asking for a broad set of topics in a generic way, the flow introduced personalisation as part of the onboarding narrative.
Traditional language learning apps often present a predefined sequence of lessons. Mila AI followed a different approach: the learning experience evolved according to the user's performance, preferences and interactions.
I designed a progressive roadmap that initially displayed three learning units rather than exposing the entire journey at once. As users completed learning activities, the system generated subsequent units automatically based on their performance.
Users begin with three available learning units.
The system uses performance and preferences to inform the learning journey.
Additional learning units are generated automatically as the user progresses.
Personalised learning is not only about deciding what users learn next. It also involves identifying what they may need to revisit.
Mila AI was designed to recognise when a user needed additional practice and determine how frequently certain concepts should be revisited. My design challenge was to make these recommendations actionable without adding unnecessary complexity to the experience.
Mila AI was designed around a continuous feedback loop. The user's preferences and learning activity informed an experience that could evolve over time, generating new learning units and identifying opportunities for additional practice.
The onboarding captures the user's language, level, goals and interests.
Users engage in AI-powered conversations instead of following a catalogue of predefined classes.
The system uses learning performance and preferences to inform the next learning units.
The system identifies learning areas that need reinforcement and determines when additional practice may be appropriate.
The journey evolves as the user interacts with the app, creating opportunities for more relevant conversations and targeted practice.
The redesigned experience was evaluated through exploratory comparative usability testing with a small group of users who had previously used the web app.
During testing, users completed tasks in less time and demonstrated a better understanding of Mila AI's personalised learning proposition. These observations provided an initial indication that the redesigned experience made the product easier to navigate and its value easier to understand.
Users completed tasks in less time during comparative usability testing with the previous web app experience.
Users demonstrated a better understanding of Mila AI's personalised, AI-driven learning experience.
The project resulted in a mobile-first experience designed to make Mila AI's core value proposition more tangible: a language learning journey that evolves with the user.
The redesigned experience brought together guided personalisation, progressive learning paths, adaptive practice and easier session continuity. By connecting onboarding, learning progression and practice, the design aimed to make the AI's adaptive capabilities more visible and understandable throughout the user journey.
The design work established the intended mobile experience and translated the product's adaptive learning capabilities into a more visible, structured user journey. As the app did not launch, post-launch retention, engagement and business impact could not be evaluated.
Making AI feel useful and visible to non-technical users is one of the hardest UX challenges — it's one I specialise in.