UX RESEARCH : Duolingo app Case Study

🌐 ABOUT THIS PROJECT

So this was my first proper UX oriented case study and design research. It’s a concept project where I wanted to work and emphasize on design process, research, ideation and creating UI screens.

🌐 WHY DUOLINGO ?

We live in a timeline of globalization. People want to discover new cultures, new societies and learn about them. 30 Million People Attempted to Learn a New Language In 2020, According to Duolingo. Especially during the pandemic, the rise of language learning users increased by quite a margin. Duolingo is one of the most popular language learning app and probably the best fun and joyful learning programme, but it is still lacking for advance and practical uses. Therefore took this concept project as my case study where I try to enhance by bringing new solutions to the existing problem.

Project duration : 1 week Feb 2022

My role: UX research and app features design

🌐 WHAT’S THE PROBLEM ?

Duolingo motivates people to do something that’s difficult, time-intensive, and mentally taxing, all while convincing them to come back tomorrow and do it all again. But the approach of duolingo is very limited in learning only the basics. To actually learn for practical purposes, users switch to different apps such as Mosalingua, but apps like these are very complex and could be intimidating for the masses.

🌐 HOW I IDENTIFIED THIS PROBLEM AND FOUND MY SOLUTION ?

🔍 DISCOVER

INITIAL RESEARCH : So I basically starts with Literature Review. Where I visit internet and search as many corners like an FBI agent to get an overview on the existing research, questions, theories, ideas on the particular topic. So to make it short below are some points that I found out during my initial research.

1. Duolingo is as a memory refresher for a language you already know the basics of.
2. Flow of the app feels one directional. Users aren’t encouraged to learn what they want.
3. Duolingo should not be used as a standalone resource. It would benefit you immensely to either supplement Duolingo with one of these resources.
4. Learning a language and learning vocabulary are not the same thing. You don’t learn language by memorizing it, you learn it from living it.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS : To begin with competitor analysis, I started looking into direct and indirect competitors that are available at the moment. Such as Memrise, Babble, Mosalingua, Bussu and few more. I went on to read the various user reviews, several research and analysis done on these apps, I personally tried them to understand their initial system, I compared how significantly are they different from each other and are those differences helping the app or creating inconvenience. Below is a summary of what I could take out from my competitive analysis.

There are basically two types of language learning apps. One that are very user friendly, easy to use but lacks to actually bring a very significant change in your language skills such as bussu and memrise.

Then there are apps that can do some “serious” level help for you language learning procedure and in many cases I might not even need supplementaries such apps like Mosalingua.

Majority of the popular apps were using similar interface and taskflow. I specially found memrise and duolingo very similar aesthetic wise.

Few apps had this feature where they could choose what they wanna learn and what not, which duolingo was obviously missing.

Another good difference I found that these apps are missing follow up and progress lessons.

🖥️ SWOT ANALYSIS

🖥️ USER RESEARCH

So for the user research I personally interviewed duolingo or other language learning app users from my discord community. To further get deepen into the research I looked upto data in the in-depth analysis of the 2021 Duolingo Language Report provided by Duolingo to decide the target market demographics.

To understand their behavior, I asked questions such as:

1. What’s the reason behind to start learning a new language
2. How they manage their time
3. How frequently they use duolingo
4. What method they use to learn their language
5. Obstacles while learning a new language
6. Their experience with duolingo

These are the insights that I attained from the interview & survey

Majority of the people are learning new languages either for school or official use or for their own hobby because of interest in different cultures. People are lazy and procrastination is a real thing which really affects their scheduling and practicing of languages.

Memorizing language does not really help for a better deepen understanding of anything. Many people said that they watch english shows and movies or korean shows and movies to enhance their language practice. Due to these methods they could get a real life usage of words and sentences.

My assumption about the obstacle and experience turned out correct. Learning few words or phrases doesn’t actually helps much practically. People learn from their surroundings. They need to “live” the language not just “mugg up” few fancy words. Although yet again the Interface and usability of duolingo is still something which holds people to use this app more often.

👩‍🦰 USER EMPATHY

EMPATHY MAP

💡 IDEATE

INITIAL IDEAS & BRAINSTORMING

TASKFLOWS

WIREFRAMES

FINAL SCREENS

SPLASHSCREEN : This appears when you start your app. After this you’ll see two changes which consists the real magic of duolingo.

Then comes the home page, where I added two new buttons, first is the worduo, which is a word swapper (at the top left corner, yellow icon). This button open ups word swapper feature where you can choose the intensity, start/pause and all you saved words, sentences in your library. This feature overlays on top of other texts and replaces with new words and sentences that you learned in your lessons, hence practicing you by fitting sub-conciously in your daily routine.

Then the 2nd change you get is the community option at the bottom. This tab allows you to interact with people who learning the same language as yours. Here you can discuss, share your progress, question your doubts etc. with people similar like you.

To help further more there is also a bot, that fixes your common queries like an AI language tutor. Plus you can also use it as your language assistance such as asking it to translate an audio or a text written in a pic or a video or as a live translator. It also provide suggestions to better your vocabulary and oral skills.

The worduo swapper also comes with a chrome and firefox extension which you can use on your pc browser. Here is a demo of how it changes the word without changing the context and also provide the meaning and pronounciation of the word. This helps you to practice whatever you learn regularly in a real life scenario.

RECOLLECT

1. Since this was my first ever proper UX case study, I get to learn a lot throughout the process.
2. Completing the project in the given time frame was a challenge but it was a gripping experience
3. I lost motivation in the middle of this project, but then I recollected my thoughts to move forward in achieving my goal.
4. I feel the final solution ideas could’ve been more convincing and simple since making a word swappers feels a little stretched.
5. This project still lack thorough user testing and I should be taking more feedbacks in the middle of the project. This is something that I would like to enhance more in the future.
6. Research is really important, when your research is solid you generate valid ideas quicker.
7. Doing too much in a project will leads to chaos and damage your project.
8. Also finally am getting an idea and am able to create my own design process. Not every step is required everytime. It really depends on the project and what it demands.

That’s all for now, hope you enjoyed. I’ll share more projects in future. Your feedbacks are always welcomed. Thanks for visiting here :) bah byee

THIS PROJECT ON BEHANCE : https://www.behance.net/gallery/139706657/UX-RESEARCH-Duolingo-Case-Study