Duolingo Experience Strategy
2023
#UX Design #Product Design
Role:
UX Designer Researcher
Duration:
5 Weeks
Duolingo, a popular language learning platform with free courses in over 40 languages, is the focus of this project. The goal is to explore innovative ways to enhance the learning experience to improve user retention and comprehension.
Duolingo Experience Audit
Value (user, society, and industry)
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Offers a freemium model, making language learning accessible to a wider audience and helping users quickly reach the introductory level of the language. The wide range of languages (43) provides variety and caters to diverse learning needs.
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Potentially enhances cultural understanding and fosters global communication. It can also empower individuals to pursue opportunities that require language skills.
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The gamified approach can boost user engagement and motivation, in retaining users and promoting long-term learning.
Target Experience:
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Dedicate 5-20 mins each day to consistently learning.
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Step-by-step structured experience to learn in a formal but relaxing way
Inspirations:
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Accessibility through the app is at your fingertips and provides flexibility in terms of time, space, and topic selection. The ability to revisit previously learned materials can be beneficial for reinforcement.
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Select your starting level to personalize your learning journey.
Competitors
Analogous
Research Goal: Understanding the reasons, motivation, and methods for learning a new language
Question:
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What are your feelings about learning a new language?
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What were the reasons you started to learn a new language?
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What methods do you think worked the best for you? Why?
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Is there anything that didn’t work?
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What keeps you motivated in the long term?
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Do you have any memories about your language learning experience you’d like to share?
Themes / Key Take Aways
Key Archetype Focus
Real world hobbiest
Cultural/contextual Learning Interests First
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Wants to learn language with others with whom they share common interest
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Have fun while learning
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Want exposure to an environment where they can listen and practice talking
Dedicated beginner
Goal Oriented Make Progress Time frame
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Need to learn for educational/professional reasons
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Goal-oriented: dedicates time/effort
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Want to learn both formal and casual ways of using language
User Motivation
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Getting a positive feedback
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Using words you’ve learned
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Talking about a common interest with a native speaker
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Get to use the language
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Being able to understand the language (from media or person)
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Being understood
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Make friends and learning other cultures
User Needs
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Environment to use the language they’re learning
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A space to have someone correct or encourage them -> maybe instant feedback
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To have some to practice with
User Behavior
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Anime, TV series, novel (media specific to the culture)
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Look for native-speaker friends with similar interests
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Talk with people who know the language
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Follows YouTubers
User Journey Map
“I’ve learned some of the language from my interest and I would like to Duolingo to practice speaking”
Key Insights
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People tend to learn and remember a new language more effectively when they have more exposure to it in a real-world setting and opportunities to practice it by speaking.
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There is scope for including social media, interaction with native speakers, local news and AI as part of learning content.
Focus Area: Evidence from the interview and synthesized user journey leads to a focus on the engagement phase of the experience.
How Might We...
How might we afford language learners easy access to the target language’s multimedia content in order to retain more of the language?
Experience Concept
Learning and practicing a language is a loop cycle.
How to make this experience
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Want to use a customized selection from onboarding to tailor users’ interest in learning content it will give motivation to users to be more engaged.
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They get to learn and practice within content that is based on interest and be exposed. they will start with an AI chatbot and grow independent from the app after they practice enough.
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Media will also help users to have examples of real life and understand more cultural elements behind the words.
New Duolingo goes through this cycle of stages of onboarding, learning, and practicing. On the onboarding stage, Duoliongo will ask questions about interest, and based on interest and AI Duoliongo will create personalized content where it will help the learning and practicing stage.
The users will learn from the content and plugin, the content is community based which is in the app. The plugin works outside the Duolingo and will help users learn.
While learning, the user can save words in their dictionary and it will be used in the practicing stage.
In this (practicing) stage, users can start practicing from the chatbot and will later move on to chat with actual people.
1. Find your interests: Create the learning content based on your interests at the beginning
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There are a lot of people learning a language from what they are interested in.
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Knowing users’ interests and creating customized content can help them keep their passion during language learning.
2. Home
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Lessons now include multimedia content giving users a more personalized and engaging experience.
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Hearing the language from native speakers and local content can help retain new vocabulary more easily.
3. Media Content:
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Questions now include multimedia content which gives users a more personalized experience.
4. Media Content
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Users can learn from native speakers to understand better.
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If a user finds a word or phrase useful they can save it to their dictionary.
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Contents will be either uploaded by creators or Duolingo can buy existing ones as well.
5. Dictionary
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Users can now save words from lessons or multimedia content to a personal dictionary to come back and study.
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They can also search for new words they might come across elsewhere and add them here.
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This is also a way for the software to learn more about the user and can help personalize the content they see.
6. Ai chatbot & Practicing
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A beginner language learner can first practice talking basic conversational vocabulary with our AI partner.
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As users advance they will be connected with someone to help each other practice.
7. Plug-in
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Take Duo with you wherever you go on your phone, highlight a word or phrase to learn more, and save it to your Duo dictionary.
What is the value of our experience strategy?
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Viewing language as a part of the culture and giving language learning a context, making it easier to remember new words.
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Creating fun and engaging language learning experiences starts with individuals’ interests.
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Give Duolingo users the ability to practice what they’ve learned.
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Create a learning and practice loop cycle with social media content that gives a cultural touch to words and phrase.
How is it benefiting our users?
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Users experience more tailored language learning content.
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Have a more enhanced understanding of the cultural meaning behind the language.
Goals Achieved
Real-world Exposure Space to practice Cultural Context.
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User testing.
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Further integrate structured and unstructured learning
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Develop the idea of partnering with content creators already making short-form learning content for platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
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A duo-lingo chrome extension for desktop to save words from anywhere on the web, similar to Grammarly.