Published in · 13 min read · Jan 4, 2022
How might Duolingo promote healthier habit-building to motivate their regular language learners?
Over the course of 2 weeks, I investigated Duolingo’s financial statements, explored their online forums, digested scientific articles, and designed a feature concept to help long-time language learners’ have healthier experiences with the Duolingo mobile app.
I submitted this case study as a part of my Kleiner Perkins Fellowship application in early January 2022.
If you are short on time, feel free to click here to jump to the final solution. Otherwise, the thought process behind this project is detailed below. Either way, I appreciate the visit! 🙂
I was an economics and accounting major in college: I spent countless hours in our campus library studying financial statements, memorizing economic formulas, and networking with people who wanted to become accountants or investment bankers. I’ll spare you all the details, but basically I know a little bit about S-1s.
And as such, I was intrigued when I heard Duolingo recently IPO’d on the NASDAQ.
Why “going public” matters
As Investopedia puts it:
“An IPO is a big step for a company as it provides the company with access to raising a lot of money. This gives the company a greater ability to grow and expand. The increased transparency and share listing credibility can also be a factor in helping it obtain better terms when seeking borrowed funds as well.”
In other words, IPO = more funds available for Duolingo to do good things! To bring free language learning to the world! As someone who is passionate about solving socio-economic problems through digital upscaling, I was so stoked.
Duolingo’s mission statement found on their website is as follows:
“The company’s mission is to make education free, fun, and accessible to all. Duolingo is designed to feel like a game and scientifically proven to be effective.”
Amazing, right?
When I started this project, I was super ecstatic to help Duolingo accomplish its mission, but it didn’t take me long to get confused.
DUOLINGO IS MISSION BASED
For one, Duolingo is a mission-based company. Duolingo founder Luis von Ahn is famous for his Duolingo origin story where he cites his “upbringing in Guatemala, where he saw how expensive it was for people in his community to learn English” as one of his main factors in creating the free language learning platform.
Another relevant point is that the founders considered registering Duolingo as a nonprofit organization but Von Ahn “judged this model as unsustainable.” (As an economics major, I cannot help but agree that a donation-based model can indeed be unsustainable).
By going public, it means that instead of solely relying on their own profit reserve to start new initiatives, Duolingo now has to please their stakeholders by generating massive year-over-year (YoY) growth in order to maintain a healthy stock value.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, the stock market works like this: People generally buy stock from a company when they think the company has massive potential to grow and expand (and thus, generate revenue). And if the company performs well and generates revenue, the company’s stock price will go up, and stockholders are now holding onto more expensive stock, by which they can sell for gains.
But Duolingo is a MISSION-BASED company that has committed to providing FREE education, so WHERE are they going to GET this growth in revenue that they need?
ANSWER: BY TURNING FREE SUBSCRIBERS INTO PAID SUBSCRIBERS
I was shocked to learn that only 5% of Duolingo users are paid subscribers, yet they generate over 70% of Duolingo profits.
So it absolutely makes sense that they have to push their free subscribers into becoming Duolingo Plus users.
They now bombard free app users with repeated ads and implemented a limited lives system to push users to subscribe to Duolingo Plus. They are using the same model Spotify uses where they try to annoy their customers into paying for their premium version.
And the kicker is that it’s working, because their stock value is increasing.
BUT WHY? HOW?
Why aren’t Duolingo users transitioning to Babbel or Rosetta Stone which guarantee higher fluency rates? If users have to pay for a language learning app, why stick with Duolingo? Let’s take a look:
- Fluency isn’t a problem
Duolingo users know that Duolingo is just a tool to get started with their language learning journeys.
Fluency isn’t a problem for Duolingo users because they know that Duolingo won’t make them fluent. Duolingo’s value proposition (i.e. the reason why people stick with it) is because they are masters of gamification and motivation. It’s the same logic for why people choose to purchase a gym membership despite being able to exercise on their own.
2. Duolingo Plus is worth it.
When people pay for a service, they are more likely to commit to using it. Costs drive consumption. “People are more likely to consume a product if they’re aware of its cost. This is known as the sunk-cost effect: Consumers feel compelled to use products they’ve paid for to avoid feeling that they’ve wasted their money.”
3. Duolingo has become a necessity for some
Duolingo’s newer tactics to switch users from free learners to paid learners is working because the Duolingo concept is “inelastic.” The company can afford to employ these strategies.
Basically, Duolingo has a lot of bandwidth to push their subscribers into paying for their content because they know their user base will STILL use Duolingo for the gamification. It’s the same concept for gas: People NEED gas so they are willing to pay for it no matter how expensive it gets (e.g. Gas is $5/gal in California and my wallet is crying but I still fork over the money). Duolingo has no immediate threats. In fact, Babbel recently halted their IPO and Rosetta Stone is…well….still expensive.
Et voila! The bottom line is that Duolingo is addictive, and it’s why people will still use it even though they are transitioning to a paid system, despite the company’s original values.
ADDICTION VS. BUILDING HEALTHY HABITS
Throughout the years, Duolingo has introduced new initiatives to help their learners stick with the platform, the most effective ones being Streaks, Achievements, Leaderboards and leagues, and Language trees.
For the scope of this project, I focused on refining Duolingo’s Streaks.
If you are familiar with Snapchat streaks, r/stopdrinking, workout streaks, then you know what a “streak” is. Streaks can be an incredible motivational tool to build great habits. Buuuuuut —
STREAK BREAKING FEELS AWFUL
There are thousands of articles out there about why breaking a streak feels awful. Humans are wired to love accomplishment — as neuropsychologists call it, we have an affinity for activity-dependent plasticity.
SO ARE DUOLINGO STREAKS HARMFUL?
To an extent, yes. After days of exploring the Duolingo online forum, I noticed a trend: posts about “Streaks” kept popping up. Celebrating 1000 day streaks. Mourning lost streaks. One learner even mentioned that they spent an entire day weeping in their bed when they lost their streak and another said they celebrated not ruining their streak even when a close friend passed away.
It goes without saying that this behavior isn’t necessarily completely detrimental, but it is safe to safe many learners’ are engaging in an unhealthy relationship with Duolingo’s Streak infrastructure, with some users even claiming that Duolingo streaks turn people into “addicts” or worse, “slaves.”
A QUICK ACKNOWLEDGMENT:
I do have to give credit to the Duolingo community. Many of them are self aware that they shouldn’t be using Duolingo to only fulfill their daily streak obligations and instead should just be using the app to embody the joy of learning new languages. These kinds of posts sometimes outnumbered the ones I saw about repairing or mourning lost streaks.
CURRENT INFRASTRUCTURES
To my knowledge, the main way Duolingo addresses unfixable streak breaks is through these SMS notifications and through their calendar found on the Home page’s feature bar:
These are great initiatives, but the notifications feel a bit half-baked, and the streaks displayed on the calendar are nice, but the directive feels a bit sterile. Also, I would think viewing the course of a 1000 day streak would be a very complicated view on this calendar (The endless scrolling would be a bit much).
SO WHAT WOULD WORK BETTER?
This was the comment that gave rise to my “Aha!” moment:
This suggestion of keeping old streaks on users’ profiles felt like a happy medium between either pushing users 1) to simply cope with their lost streak withdrawal period or 2) to completely compartmentalize but ignore their hard-earned streak that they built.
In conclusion, the healthiest option was to incorporate the positive aspects of both mindsets :-)
FINALLY — THE KEY QUESTION
How might we refine Duolingo’s streak interface to be healthier for individuals to help digest a lost streak?
Truthfully, now that we’d established that Duolingo’s “lost-streak” infrastructure needs to be improved, it wasn’t really a “How?” question but really a “Where?” question:
WHERE would be the best place to insert Streak Memorabilia within the Duolingo mobile interface?
I thought of two places a “Streak Memorabilia” section could work:
On Duolingo’s Home Screen Feature Bar & Under Users’ Achievements on Their Profile Page. Here are what they currently look like:
ORIGINALS
NEW DEMO
1) On Duolingo’s Home Screen Feature Bar
PROS: You can see all your previous streaks arranged starting from longest.
CONS: Perhaps it is a little too simple (but simple isn’t always bad).
2) Under The User’s Achievements on Their Profile Page
During my design process, I would have actually stopped at the home screen, but I noticed that Duolingo actually displays a “Wildfire Achievement” on both users’ and users’ friends’ profiles:
However, Wildfire Achievements are maxed out a Level 10, or when someone gets their 365 day streak. The problem with this is that though these streaks can be celebrated, my hypothesis is that oftentimes the more “anguished” individuals are people with much higher streaks, like take an 832 day streak for example.
So what if we extended the Wildfire Achievement past 365 days, let’s say perhaps, 2000 days?
I had to try this out:
PROS:
- If users are the type to like celebrating their wins with others, adding Wildfire Achievement levels would be a nice thing to have! It’s fairly harmless and does not foster any negativity (at least none that I can think of)
CONS:
- If users are more reserved than others, then maybe this isn’t the way to go.
- The way Achievements are designed right now is that you can only see the highest “Streak” you’ve achieved so far. There is no way to see multiple streaks you’ve accomplished.
- Additionally, I decided not to make an “infinite” Wildfire Achievement because in the end I still wanted to help users take out the overly gamified aspect of Duolingo.
My logic is, by 2000 days logged on Duolingo, each day logged on is less and less important to the users’ language learning development, so the days feel less “scarce” and thus, they will now have the capacity to celebrate on their own, no streak-driven motivation needed :-)
Which one is better?
I admit I am making a big assumption here, but since the Home Screen Feature Bar approach allows for users to see multiple streaks they’ve had in a noninvasive manner and the Achievements approach allows for users to share former Streaks with their friends, I think having both these approaches would work beautifully.
Extra context: As it was unreasonable for me to source a statistically significant number of individuals from my target demographic, nor could I perform AB testing effectively to determine which proposed method would work better or if they would work better synchronously within the remaining time I had for this project, I cannot say for certain that these ideas would work /Cries in poor college graduate/ :-(
INTERVIEWING MY FRIENDS
Throughout the building of this case study, I messaged several of my friends who regularly use Duolingo to see if I could generate more insights. One friend, Lawton, allowed me to interview him through Zoom!
Lawton has been a desktop user (Duolingo’s desktop version is completely free vs. the mobile app!) since nearly the beginning of Duolingo. He currently has over 2000 days logged, but for him, streaks don’t really matter — he’s lost a 1000+ day streak once before yet continues to learn for the sake of learning.
I asked him why he’d been so committed to Duolingo and what I gleaned from our conversation is that he just signed up for it because he loved the “free” nature of the platform.
I also asked him if Duolingo one day changed their Desktop version from free to paid, if he’d be willing to pay for the platform. He said no, which made sense.
If there were any takeaways from my call with Lawton, it’s this:
Duolingo, make sure you keep your Desktop version free. Many of your long-time users will leave (and are leaving) if you push everyone to become paid subscribers (and you know this!)
LIMITED RESOURCES
As someone who was a college student less than a month ago, I’m very strapped for resources, so it’s hard to conduct research. However, with a brand presence as strong as Duolingo’s, sometimes online communities help! I heavily relied on Duolingo Forums and App Store reviews for this case study.
SOCIAL MEDIA BIAS
Given that most of my info came from Duolingo Forums, I am slightly worried about social media bias. It goes without saying that social media often generate echo chambers that inflate some thoughts and opinions more so than others. If I had more time, I would arrange 1:1 interviews with a statistically significant number of individuals from my target audience (at least 30).
NOT A MEMBER OF THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC
I am, ironically, not an active Duolingo user. I prefer immersive learning where I get to talk to a native speaker. As much as I love Duo, I admit I’m not a monthly active user (MAU), though I did make it to their top 7% of learners this year. Eu estou aprendendo português! 🇧🇷
Therefore, I acknowledge that I may have gotten some things wrong.
Modifying Duolingo to fit KaiOS screens (imagine a smart flip phone).
Back in 2018, KaiOS was gaining market share (even becoming the third biggest mobile operating system after Android and iOS) as it provided a more affordable option for people in Lower Income Countries to access 4G Data. However, despite 4G coverage improving, there remains a usage gap: many individuals just don’t know how to use phones or are illiterate. Bringing Duolingo to them through KaiOS devices would have been a great idea!
Why this idea flopped: Turns out Androids are becoming cheaper anyway so there was no need to proceed with this idea. Google also abandoned KaiOS services this year despite investing $22 million towards collaborating with the platform.
Duolingo just launched Duolingo ABC
I downloaded Duolingo ABC and….felt like I was being treated like a kid. Makes sense, right? It’s an app for kids. However, I noticed in their App Store reviews that several “grown” individuals liked the Duolingo ABC learning style and I know many immigrants coming into the US are sometimes illiterate so they would not be able to use the original Duolingo (as Duolingo’s interface is usually more accommodating to people who know at least one language already).
Why this idea flopped: It’s a great app with tons of great reviews! I just thought it was great that Duolingo designed an engaging app for kids and siblings to learn English. Basically, an app made for kids should prioritize kids!
Duolingo’s newest investment: Duolingo English Test
DET has gained traction and looks incredibly promising as an affordable alternative to the TOEFL accepted by big institutions (e.g. Yale University) .
Why this idea flopped: It needs work, but mainly from a Customer Service perspective.
Creating a “Broken Streak Society”
One of the coolest things I discovered was Duolingo’s exclusive Streak Society! You get automatically inducted into the club once you get 365 days logged.
But as my case study suggests, sometimes streaks aren’t all good, so I thought about designing a “Broken Streak Society” for people who had broken streaks over 365 days long.
Why this idea flopped: I couldn’t access any visual assets that would tell me about Duolingo’s Streak Society (additionally, none of my immediate friends paid much attention to it). I just didn’t (and couldn’t) know much about it.
Simply put, the redesign of “lost-streak” infrastructure had the easiest narrative to follow, so that’s what I went with.
To my very smart sister, my investment banker boyfriend, my friend Lawton, the amazing online Duolingo community, and the team at Duolingo and Kleiner Perkins for providing the opportunity for such an amazing fellowship to people like me.
Finally, this is completely off topic, and despite the criticisms I’ve detailed above, I promise I don’t hate Duolingo! To prove it, I literally dressed up as Duo this Halloween ❤️
