The Best Example of Leveraging iOS Widget Potential: Duolingo
The iOS widget is often underrated.
Many view it simply as a tool to display certain information — such as stock prices or current temperatures — outside of an app, but this perspective misses the widget’s full potential.
In this article, I compare and analyze how 3 top language learning apps utilize widgets. These include the globally popular Duolingo, and two apps that are popular in Korea: the English learning app Speak(스픽) and Say Voca(말해보카). I really love these apps and use them every day to study foreign languages!
What value do the widgets provide?
- Duolingo: motivate users to maintain their streak.
- Speak: display users’ upcoming lessons.
- Say Voca: ❌
How many widget families are provided?
- Duolingo: 4 widgets
- Speak: 3 widgets
- Say Voca: ❌
Are the widget features promoted anywhere?
- Duolingo: Promotional pages are shown to users who haven’t installed the widgets, along with guides on how to install them.
- Speak: ❌
- Say Voca: ❌
Let’s delve into the details with images.
Duolingo offers 4 widget families: 2 for the lock screen and 2 for the home screen.
The design focuses on textual information about the user’s streak and prominently features their mascot, the Owl ‘Duo’. The variety in widget designs is impressive.
Their blog reveals that the widgets are intricately designed to reflect the user’s learning progress, which I found very impressive.
Speak also provides 3 home widgets, focusing more on upcoming lessons rather than streaks, which can feel more like a ‘homework’ reminder than a motivational tool.
Unfortunately, Say Voca does not offer any widgets. 😅
A common blind spot with widgets is that many users are not even aware of their existence unless they actively look for them.
This underscores the need for a dedicated widget promotion page.
Duolingo smartly promotes its widget features throughout the app with separately designed promotions for both the Home and Lock screen widgets.
However, pressing the [ADD WIDGET] button on those pages won’t automatically install the widget. Adding iOS widgets requires cumbersome manual actions.
Many iPhone users, especially young kids or the elderly, are unfamiliar with how to install widgets.
Duolingo recognizes the inconvenience of this process and provides nicely designed guides on how to install the widgets.
These are not just static images but are very smooth Lottie animations!
Conclusion
Depending on your app’s characteristics, smart implementation of widgets is highly recommended for educational apps focused on maintaining streaks for motivation.
While many apps use discounts or micro cash rewards to increase DAU, well-designed widgets alone can significantly drive re-engagement.
Duolingo’s widget may serve as an excellent example for the industry.
