Uta: A Japanese Music Learning Experience.
While studying Japanese through music, I kept leaving songs to look up words, readings, and translations across separate tools. I designed and built Uta, a lyric-first MVP that keeps search, reading support, and word-level meaning inside the listening experience.
Scope Research → Concept → Prototype → Build → Polish
Music should feel like music,
not homework.
Learning Japanese through songs sounded natural, but the workflow was fragmented.
One lyric could pull me across translation, dictionary, lyrics, and pronunciation tools.
The problem was not access to information. It was interruption.
Translation alone isn't enough.
The friction was not one problem. Sometimes I needed to recognize the character, sometimes pronounce it, and sometimes connect the translation back to the word I had just heard. The pattern fell into four stages:
Can the learner identify the characters in front of them?
Can they sing along — even without knowing the meaning yet?
Can they map meaning back to individual words, not just whole lines?
Can they revisit, save, and slowly need less support over time?
One lyric. Adapted to confidence.
Learners weren't struggling with the same thing. Some needed help reading characters, others needed pronunciation support, and advanced learners wanted more immersion. The reading modes adapt to those different stages.
Full Guidance
Romaji is always an option. One slider setting that makes every lyric readable for listeners new to Japanese.
Balanced Listening
Pronunciation steps back. Translation stays available. The lyric starts to feel more natural.
Immersion Mode
The lyric fills the frame. Translation appears only on tap. Music leads — meaning follows when you need it.
Three moments,
one continuous flow.
Search, read, and understand Japanese lyrics without leaving the song.
Try the Live MVP ↗Real songs, real lyrics.
Search real songs and verified lyrics, not stripped-down examples.
Reading support, your way.
Choose your reading support level. Reduce it as you gain confidence.
Meaning, exactly when asked for.
The popup answers the learner's most immediate question first: what does this word mean?
A working prototype, not a screenshot.
Designed, built, and deployed as a working product. Every interaction shown in this case study exists in the live application.
What the Product Taught Me
- 同Synced playback
- 勧Suggested songs
- 蔵Saved vocabulary
- 句Phrase-level meaning
The prototype looked complete, but the product exposed every assumption.
Early versions treated each word like an isolated dictionary lookup. Real lyrics broke that quickly because Japanese meaning often lives in phrases, grammar, and context.
The strongest design decisions came from solving those product problems, not adding more screens.