The psychology behind duolingo UX
Introduction
Duolingo is a language learning platform where it uses gamification, psychology and other UX techniques to keep its more than 200 million users engaged in learning a new language. Its learn around 2000 words and 8000 sentences of more than 30 different languages for free
Duolingo mainly focuses on maximizing the user’s ability to remember the languages learned. There are many psychological factors that can dramatically affect the language learning process. In this article, we will take a look at the underlying techniques of UX and Psychology used by Duolingo and examine it in three major components: motivation, memory, and mind.
Motivation:
Duolingo employs goal-oriented learning where the users are encouraged and motivated internally by the application whenever they complete the goal. It uses other motivation strategies which are discussed below.
Goal Oriented Behaviour:
Duolingo assigns daily learning goals to the users who are learning a language. It also has a consecutive streak capability where the users are encouraged to practice their language every day.
Accomplishments:
Once the user finishes the target for the day, the users receive XP for their accomplishments and also get tracked in the consecutive streak which gives Crowns when you level up in the language.
Rewards:
The user also gets rewarded for the consecutive streak and finishing courses by an in-game currency called Lingots, this currency is used to buy powers ups and bonus skills.
Social Interaction:
Duolingo has intrinsic social interaction in the form of in-game community where users can compete and interact with each other and extrinsic social interaction in the form of sharing achievements to Social networks as well as professional networks like LinkedIn.
Memory:
Duolingo uses psychology to help its users learn. It uses spaced repetition as a learning technique. Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect.
According to studies, using spaced repetition, users are projected to remember 92 percent of the material they learn and takes less time to study than other study methods.
Each lesson is constructed in such a way that it involves methods of learning a language:
Listening:
The more you listen to the pronunciation of the new language, the sooner you will become familiar with its sounds and structures. You will first recognize words, then the word sequences and then entire passages of speech. “Each language has its own music,” says Limacher-Riebold. Repeating will give you a feel for the language’s music so you can memorize the rhythm and intonation of the language.
Reading:
Seeing the language in its written form helps you understand its structure. It also anchors the new sounds and helps them get imprinted on the mind.
Speaking :
When a user is made to speak the language repeatedly, it will give the user confidence that they can speak the language and also gives the users pronunciation a near-native sound when speaking.
Mind:
Cognitive load:
In the study of cognitive psychology, cognitive load is defined as the amount of mental effort used in the working memory. A human brain can understand and process only a limited amount of data in a given period and only for a particular time frame. Hence it is important to understand that every user has their own pace of learning and allow them to be able to select the pace they want to learn it.
Gamification:
Gamification is a process for integrating game mechanics to motivate participation. It introduces game design elements into non-game applications to make them look more fun and engaging. The use of gaming elements like leaderboards, progress bars, loyalty points and self-expression to encourage actions through positive feedback. These tricks tap into our natural instincts: competition, exploration, curiosity.
Duolingo as an application uses these game mechanics in different combinations to accomplish the desired goal.
- Fast Feedback
- Goals
- Badges
- Leveling Up
- Competition
- Collaboration
- Community
- Points
Social interaction:
Duolingo has the ability to compete and interact with its users. It creates a space in the application where the users can help each other learn, follow each other and share their progress outside the application to social networks.
UX + Business:
When Duolingo started out, it gave the premium experience of an ad-free application for free. it has moved towards the freemium model now as it offers a paid version of the app that removes advertisements and you can pay to obtain gems, an in-game currency that helps you unlock content beforehand and also gives you extra chances.
Conclusion:
Duolingo employs techniques of psychology and Ux to become one of the best language learning applications in the world. These techniques and many more can be used in other applications to improve the end user experience in multiple ways.
