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Duration
2023-ongoing
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responsibilites
Design lead
User research
design system
3D design & motion
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team size
80+ people
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Download
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About
Redesigning a product with millions of monthly users was both a daunting and exhilarating challenge. Shortly after I joined the project and began collaborating with another designer, he left the company, leaving me as the sole member of the design team for most of the journey. Wearing multiple hats, I took on design, research, developer coordination, usability testing, establishing the design system, and even 3D and motion design. Despite the immense workload, the project achieved remarkable results, significantly increasing user retention and conversion rates.
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Onboarding
The onboarding in the legacy Mondly app had many unnecessary steps which lead to high drop off rate and did not build any expectation towards the actual Mondly experience. The new path is aiming at simplifying the experience, creating wow effect with sleak 3D animations and mainly collecting relevant data from the user, which is giving us extremely important information about user motivations and habits.
pain points & solutions
High drop-off rate on the language selection screen.
Split the language and difficulty selection into separate steps. This change had a huge positive impact on the drop-offs.
Onboarding failed to communicate the product's value
Introduced an introductory carousel that appears when users open the app for the first time and removed unnecessary steps.
Confusing premium screen leading to unintended purchases. Users tapped "Continue" multiple times to skip onboarding but accidentally signed up for premium without noticing the premium screen.
Although the premium screen layout couldn't be altered due to constraints, extending the loading animation reduced customer complaints significantly.


Old Mondly

Redesign
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Discovery and progress
The biggest areas of change were the Explore page and the new Map. Explore page serves as a place where users can discover many features that Mondly has to offer. Previously features like Chatbot, Daily lessons, or business courses were hidden in the map, or accessed through a small icon, which led to low discoverability. Users also lacked a clear guidance towards what to do once they come back into the app. The new hero section has a clear CTA which leads users to the next lesson in their curriculum.
pain points & solutions
Difficulties with navigation in the map and lack of progression.
Redesigned the map into a linear format, clearly displaying progress in each category.
Low discoverability of extracurricular content.
Introduced an "Explore" page, allowing users to access all additional content. This change increased lesson starts by over 300% in some cases.
Low retention to the statistics page.
Merged the profile and course progress pages into a single view, reducing the complexity of the information architecture.
Old Mondly
Redesign
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Learning experience
One of the most important things of this redesign was modernizing our 25+ quiz types, through which our users learn the new language. After the first release I was closely monitoring user reviews and data, which led me to further improvements in areas of usability, accessibility and UI handling on low end devices. All these changes improved the lesson completion up to 20%.
pain points & solutions
Outdated UI that did not meet modern standards
Conducted a complete redesign of all quiz templates and updated all images using MidJourney-generated visuals to ensure greater visual consistency.
Inconsistent UI and poor accessibility
Implemented reusable components, improved color contrast, and enhanced compatibility with screen readers for better accessibility.
Cumbersome and uninspiring user experience
Increased animation speed, added haptic feedback, and incorporated gamification elements to make the overall experience more engaging.


Old Mondly


Redesign
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Design system
Despite initial missed opportunities in establishing a comprehensive design system, I managed to lay a solid groundwork that enhanced speed and communication between designers and developers. We're now developing a new design system based on industry best practices, incorporating a semantic token system. This involves refactoring all components and aligning with both native engineering teams to synchronize our libraries.
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Future of language learning
After launching the redesign we started a new initiative which revolutionizes mobile language learning. With the help of learning experts from Pearson, one of the leaders in the education, we’re introducing a level of personalization and focus on efficacy which was never seen before in this industry. If you want to find out more, look at the case study of Mondly 2.0 (coming soon).
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Afterthoughts
Redesigning a product involves significant risks, even for a mature company. However, we successfully rolled out a complete redesign to millions of active users with minimal backlash—a rare achievement in the digital product space. This success was largely due to our approach: maintaining core functionality while addressing the most critical usability issues.
If I could start over, I would allocate more time to building a robust design system foundation and conducting deeper research and testing. Unfortunately, as the sole designer, my capacity was limited. Despite these constraints, the redesign has been highly successful, delivering measurable improvements to our key metrics.
While the redesign didn’t fully address the core user issues, it was a crucial step in strengthening Mondly’s foundation. The improved codebase and design system will enable us to iterate faster and address user needs more effectively moving forward.
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testimonial
“I worked closely with Daniil for a year as his direct line manager. Over the course of the year, I was impressed on innumerable occasions by his growth. His ability to absorb feedback and turn it into something immediately actionable has been a driver for this. In addition, Daniil has a deep passion for creating great products, and this drive often leads him to go above and beyond to find solutions to problems - at times, even if the problems are not his own! I often said this to my colleagues when new projects came in, and we needed to build the design team for them - getting Daniil onboard is always a win.”
Nyle Levi, Lead Designer