Fixing Mismatched Audio to Reduce User Frustration
Imagine you are trying to learn a language and notice a word that you know isn’t right. In the app! You look it up online and verify that you aren’t going crazy! You go through the work of changing it, only to start an activity and hear the old, outdated, incorrect audio play.
Frustrating, right? This was a common bug reported by users of Embark, a language -learning app for Mormon missionaries used at the Missionary Training Center (MTC).
As the lead UX designer on Embark, I designed a new audio generation feature to solve this issue, significantly reducing user complaints and ensuring a smoother learning experience.
Product
Embark App
Team
1 Project manager
1 developer
Role
Design lead
Background
Embark supports over 60 languages, allowing missionaries to learn and refine their language skills. To help with accuracy, the app lets users edit words when they notice errors or regional differences (e.g., a word differing in Spain vs. Mexico).
Problem
Editing a word only changed the text—the original audio remained the same.
This mismatched text and audio confused users, making it harder to learn correct pronunciations.
Many reported frustration when they updated a word but still heard the outdated audio during lessons.
Goal
Ensure audio always matches edited words.
To improve accuracy and prevent confusion, we needed to:
Research
Finding a related issue
While reviewing Jira tickets related to audio mismatches, I discovered an additional issue:
Related issue
User compliaints about audio recording quality
Many users complained about poor-quality audio recordings for certain words.
The content team was re-recording audio, but this process was slow due to Embark large number of supported languages.
Idea
Killing two birds with one stone
Instead of just fixing mismatched audio, we could also allow users to generate new AI-powered audio to replace low-quality recordings.
Brainstorming
Our team brainstormed potential solutions to the mismatched audio problem. Working closely with my project manager and a developer, we came up with two main ideas:
Idea 1
Let user’s record their own audio
Many users were still learning the language, so they might mispronounce words, reinforcing bad habits.
Idea 2
Selected idea
Generate audio using AI
Would AI-generated audio sound natural and accurate?
After talking with the team we decided letting user's record their own audio would be the best solution. But we wanted to test to make sure we could consistently produce high quality audio. So we set out to test out this idea.
Test results
Validated AI generated audio
I worked with a developer to test AI-generated audio across multiple words and languages.
The results were impressive—AI was both fast and high-quality, making it the best solution.
Design
Once we finalized our approach, I got to work on the design. I added an audio card to the word-edit page. This card allows users to listen to the current audio and generate new audio if they don’t like what they hear.
Audio card
Editing a word
If they edit a word, new audio is generated automatically, but they can always switch back to the original Embark audio if they prefer.
Generating new audio
In the new design users could also generate new audio from this card without needing to edit the word if they didn’t like the default. Through a loading state they are shown visually that the audio is generating and they see a toast when it is done.
Testing
To evaluate the updated design, I conducted usability tests with 5 missionaries at the MTC.
Test focus
Testing user understanding
Do users understand that AI is generating new audio for edited words?
Is it clear that outdated audio is being replaced?
Test results
Understanding of new design
100% of participants quickly understood the feature.
All users found it easy to use and saw it as a major improvement.
Results
Since launching, user complaints about incorrect or low-quality audio have dropped significantly. Missionaries now experience smoother, more accurate language learning. 100% of testers found the feature easy to use and agreed it was a major improvement.