What Makes Learning Apps Fun?
Create awesome learning experiences through the power of fun.
Do you remember copying from the teacher’s board in school and feeling incredibly bored? Learning felt more like a chore than an enjoyable experience. Now, imagine diving into learning a new language through an engaging app. Learning might feel way more exciting to you. So why is it that some learning experiences captivate us, while others quickly become monotonous?
Is there any scientific proof? Of course! Let’s dive into the theory behind the concept of fun in general with Raph Koster’s remarkable book “A Theory of Fun in Game Design”.
In this article, you will learn how the theory of fun can be used to create delightful learning experiences. You will get first-hand insights into how we at Lingvano, the leading app for learning sign languages, apply these principles to create enjoyable learning experiences, while also identifying areas for improvement.
Where Did the Fun Go?
When you reminisce about your childhood, there’s a game that you probably found incredibly enjoyable: Tic-Tac-Toe. It was the perfect game to combat boredom in school, as you engaged in strategic moves to outsmart your opponents while you should have been taking notes in class.
However, what was once an entertaining game eventually becomes tedious because at some point, you become a master of the game (which happens rather quickly in Tic-Tac-Toe), and every game ends in a predictable draw.
This perfectly illustrates that you have fun when there’s still something left for you to learn.
Fun comes from learning in a pressure-free environment.
Your Brain and Patterns
To understand why activities become boring once you master them, let’s explore the concept of “patterns.”
Your brain is hardwired to seek and recognize patterns in everything. It’s a survival mechanism that helps you make sense of the world around you. Additionally, your brain tends to be lazy and prefers not to exert too much effort on tasks that can be automated.
When you have mastered Tic-Tac-Toe, you know all the patterns. You no longer need to consciously deliberate your next move or consider potential risks — it becomes second nature. However, your brain craves novelty and learning. Engaging in activities on autopilot may be efficient but also incredibly dull.
Patterns exist not only in games but also in any learning experience. Whether it’s learning a musical instrument, mastering a new language, or acquiring a new skill. Your brain creates patterns that you can utilize in the future.
Your Brain and Noise
On the other end of the spectrum, activities can be “not fun” when they present information that is too difficult for you to comprehend.
Your brain has an inherent aversion to chaos. When you encounter something new, your brain instinctively seeks patterns to make sense of the information. When you can’t find an immediate pattern, you experience frustration — this is what we refer to as “noise.” Noise essentially represents any pattern that you don’t yet understand.
Imagine joining a French class in the middle of the semester where the curriculum is already advanced compared to what you remember. To you, what is being taught seems like gibberish noise, while everyone else in the room perceives patterns within the sentences, grammar, and vocabulary.
That’s why it’s crucial for you to learn in a context where the amount of new information is manageable. Overwhelming your brain with too many new patterns to learn can lead to a sense of chaos. However, as soon as you start recognizing patterns in the noise, it no longer feels overwhelming. You become intrigued and eager to understand it better.
The general learning journey typically consists of three steps:
- Recognizing a Pattern in the Noise
- Intuitively Understanding the Pattern
- Embedding the Pattern in your Muscle Memory
When effectively facilitated, this journey makes games and learning experiences engaging and enjoyable.
The Essence of a Good Learning Experience
In an ideal scenario, learning experiences should provide an enjoyable platform for your brain to seek out and learn new patterns.
However, many tasks fail to meet these expectations:
- Some tasks are too easy or trivial, failing to challenge you.
- Other tasks might be overly complex or uninteresting, overwhelming you with information.
- Some tasks may unveil new patterns too slowly, leaving you feeling that they lack depth.
- Other tasks may reveal patterns too quickly, making you feel lost and confused.
You have a positive learning experience when it maintains your interest, challenges you just enough to keep you engaged, but not to the extent that you feel overwhelmed.
Fun in Learning Apps
When designing learning apps, maintaining a balanced blend of noise and existing patterns is crucial. A learning app should teach everything it has to offer before the user stops using it.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the user needs to complete all available courses (although that would be ideal). What is essential is that the user is exposed to all the different learning concepts that the app has to offer before they stop using it.
It would be a missed opportunity if a team of experts created various types of learning formats that are amazing by themselves, but users never reach them because users abandon the app too early because the learning curve is too steep in the beginning.
The same holds true if the content starts to become trivial after the initial stages of learning. It’s important to strike a balance and keep users in a state of “Flow,” where the challenges always match their current skill level.
Fun in Lingvano
With this theoretical stuff about brain and concepts of how to effectively learn, you surely would love to see practical examples, don’t you? We are the largest app for learning sign languages. You will find that we have implemented several features that contribute to a fun and engaging learning experience. However, you will see that there are still areas where we can improve.
Things That Are Already Fun for Users
Learning Streak
We have introduced a Streak Feature that adds a gamification element to the app. This motivates users to learn every day and earn rewards, which is an example of introducing a pattern. Once users understand the pattern and realize that doing a lesson each day helps maintain their streak, it becomes a regular part of their learning routine. The Streak Feature has been widely used in various learning apps and has proven to be effective in keeping users engaged and rewarding their efforts.
Various Types of Lessons
We offer a wide range of lesson formats to keep users engaged. By providing different types, such as images, videos, texts, and “fill the gap” questions, we ensure that users encounter diverse and engaging content. This prevents boredom and provides new challenges for users to overcome and new patterns to learn. Remember, learning new patterns in this pressure-free environment creates the most fun for users!
Clear and Consistent Feedback
Do you remember how frustrating it feels when you don’t get clear feedback when learning? When users answer a question, we ensure that the outcome is communicated effectively. We use a consistent color scheme and vibrations on the phone to indicate whether the answer is correct or incorrect. This immediate and consistent feedback helps users understand their progress and adjust their learning strategies accordingly. After one or two lessons, you will have the colors green and red saved as a pattern already!
Areas for Improvement
Result Score Calculation
Currently, as a user, you have no insight into how the Result Score of a lesson is calculated. This lack of transparency can cause confusion. We plan to address this by transitioning from displaying the score as a percentage to showing the number of questions answered correctly out of the total. For example, instead of “80% correct,” we will show “8 out of 10 questions answered correctly.” This change aims to provide users with a clearer understanding of their performance. By providing this information, we aim to eliminate the noise that can lead to user confusion and enhance their learning experience.
Gradual Difficulty Increase
We acknowledge that there is room for improvement in gradually increasing the difficulty of our learning modes. According to the theory of fun in learning, it is critical to strike a balance between introducing new material and reinforcing existing patterns. The brain craves both challenge and clarity, so it’s important to find the perfect balance where tasks are neither too easy nor too difficult.
Some lessons are still harder than they should be, while others may be too easy. Our dedicated content team is continuously working on fine-tuning the difficulty level of lessons to ensure they align with the user’s progress in the course. We strive to find the perfect balance that challenges users without overwhelming them, creating the most enjoyable learning experience.
Milestone Lessons
Finally, Lingvano offers special lessons called “Milestones” after users complete a few chapters of content. In these lessons, users have the opportunity to collect stars by answering questions correctly. The number of correct answers needed to earn a star depends on the user’s progress and the complexity of the content. However, this system can sometimes be confusing for users. This confusion can be considered as a form of “noise” in the learning experience.
To address this, we are currently working on standardizing the number of questions required to earn a star and improving the communication of this information. Our goal is to ensure that users always know what to expect and have a clear understanding of their progress to reach the next star.
Conclusion
The theory of fun in learning emphasizes the importance of maintaining a balance between novelty and existing patterns. Learning experiences become enjoyable when they provide a pressure-free environment for our brains to learn new patterns.
The brain craves both challenge and clarity, so it’s crucial to strike a balance between tasks that are too easy or too difficult.
Remember, true fun in learning comes from continuous improvement, eliminating unnecessary noise, and embracing the joy of acquiring new knowledge.
By incorporating gamification elements, diverse lesson formats, and clear feedback, learning apps like Lingvano strive to create engaging and enjoyable experiences.
But Lingvano’s journey to create a fun learning experience certainly doesn’t end here. Our commitment is to make the learning experience as enjoyable as possible, encouraging more people to engage with and learn sign languages to keep building bridges for a more inclusive world.
If you are interested in the topic of fun in learning, I highly encourage you to give the book A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster a read.
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