DuoLingo

Leveraging community and AI to create a safe and immersive language learning experience for users

View Prototype

Role:

Lead UX Researcher, Project Manager

Teammates:

Glenna Garvey, Lead UX Designer

Greg Delgado, UX Designer

Christian Chamberlain, UX Researcher

Timeline: 2 weeks

Build real-world language skills wherever you are

About DuoLingo

Duolingo is a language-learning platform that offers personalized lessons in over 37 different languages. Its language learners can track their progress, earn rewards, and practice reading, writing, speaking, listening and conversation with intelligent Chatbots.

The Problem and Opportunity

Duolingo recognizes its limitations in providing users with conversational practice. Its voice recognition feature and AI chatbots fall short in providing users with the tools they need to reach oral proficiency. Duolingo wants to leverage community to create language immersive experiences that will ultimately help its users master fluency.

Our Goals

Understand the users preferences and pain points encountered when learning a new language.

Improve the users confidence in their language speaking skills by leveraging community in a fun and challenging way.

Create an in app experience that feels consistent with DuoLingos existing branding and gamified style.

What do users need?

We conducted user interviews with users currently learning a new language using mobile applications.
Focusing on the following key interview questions, we attempted to gain a better understanding of users needs in the language learning space:

What has been difficult or gotten in the way of practicing conversationally?
What language goal(s), if accomplished, would be most meaningful to you?
What draws you to language learning apps versus alternate ways to learn a language?

After analyzing and affinity mapping the user interview data we came up with three main topics to iterate on in order to create the optimal user experience:

"I want to work with others but I'm afraid of being judged on my mistakes"
"I want my learning to be relevant to real world scenarios"
"I learn well with a variety of resources"

How do other language apps teach users?

We found that although Babbel and Rosetta Stone lead the language learning options with the most interaction to a live person, the person on the other side of the app is a fluent language expert, not another learner in their community. According to our initial interviews, users preferred learning in a more casual setting rather than feeling as though they're in a classroom.

Meet Ella

We used the information from my user interviews to create a persona, Ella.

Ella Watts is a vibrant young professional interested in expanding her learning opportunities in any way she can. She’s currently been learning Spanish with Duolingo. Although Ella loves the Duolingo app, its lack of ability to practice conversations is frustrating. She wants to be able to apply her knowledge from the app in the real world and is struggling to do so without access to conversation partners in real life or in app. Talking to someone else in Spanish is appealing for her goals, but Ella also fears embarrassing herself while she is learning how to converse.

Goals:

Communicate to new friends in Spanish
Feel comfortable learning a new language
Feel prepared in real life language scenarios

Frustrations:

Limited access to others also learning Spanish
Lacks the confidence to practice Spanish with people who are already fluent

Crafting an ideal user flow to engage users and build community

We created a flow for chatting with strangers to practice their language but realized that although it added a community feature, it lacked the structure to be a gamified part of DuoLingo.

Developing DuoScenarios

Based on our user research and client requests, we wire-framed and iterated on DuoScenarios, an in app game option that connects users with strangers to record realistic voice prompts and have a real time, anonymous conversation in the language of their choice. An icon of Duo the Owl would moderate and correct users through AI as they record their responses. Based on survey results, users preferred the name "practice pal" in lieu of "strangers" as it incited personability and friendliness.

We used game references such as Pokèmon and Animal Crossing to create a gamified real world simulation of conversation's between users.

We focused on the following features during our designing phase:

iteration 2

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Connect users to strangers who are currently learning the same module to allow users to gain confidence in speaking while protecting anonymity.

Simulate real world conversation in DuoLingos friendly style to continue gamification while increasing the immersive experience.

Allow users to add strangers as friends after DuoScenarios participation to build community among language learners.

Provide prompts and corrections in a friendly manner to instill confidence while maintaining a functional level of learning.

Mid Fidelity Prototype

Utilizing DuoLingo's existing design library as well as our findings from user interviews, we included the following design decisions to address users needs:

Real life scenarios in line with user learning module

Progress bar

Visual prompts to listen to partners response

Prompts from Duo

Ability to voice record responses

Visual prompts to fix mistakes

Kept current in app reward system for continuity and gamification

Ability to add practice pal to friends list

What went wrong?

We conducted usability testing, having the users complete a full game of DuoScenarios.

We informed the users that they had completed enough learning activities to be able to access a new game called DuoScenarios. They were instructed to find game option and play through the game mockup. We were expecting users to be able to complete the task in under 5 minutes with 3 errors or less.

No users were able to complete the task within the parameters.

Issue 1

Characters were confusing

Users didn't understand which icon was them and which was their practice pal. One user thought they were conversing the Duo the owl.

Takeaways: Create a clear distinction between speakers.

Issue 2

Unclear prompts on when to speak and listen

Testers were unable to identify when the practice pal was "speaking" as there was no change in the screen. In addition, the unchanging color of the "tap to speak" button was unclear about when users were supposed to record a response.

Takeaways: Animate ellipsis and use colors to indicate when a response is needed.

Making DuoScenarios more user friendly

Taking into account the feedback from usability testing, we focused on the following design decisions for the high fidelity prototype.

Due to time constraints, there were other issues, such as the logistics of choosing to play DuoScenarios with a friend and creating a personal avatar, that we wished we could address but were unable to do so.

Create larger color banners to reduce confusion between waiting for a response, prompted to record, and need to re-record a response.
Animate ellipses to clearly indicate progression in the game.
Keep partner pal anonymity and create welcoming visuals to foster a comforting practice environment.
Remove Duo the Owl to eliminate unclear speaker hierarchy.

View Prototype

Users appreciated colorful changes

Users responded well to the changes and were able to complete the task with little to no errors.

Next steps

In future iterations, I believe the following changes would enhance user experience:

Design and test a way for users to play with friends. Our original idea included this but as we created the flow and frames, we realized that the timeline of this project did not allow for ideation on the intricacies this design would entail.

Create a personalized avatar. I believe that allowing users to personalize an avatar that would be inserted into the DuoScenarios game screen would allow users to feel more immersed in the DuoLingo experience.

Specific rewards systems. For brevity, we decided to include DuoLingos current reward system at the end of game play, but I believe developing and testing which unique rewards user would prefer for this game could increase user retention.

Reflections

Usability testing is key- The usability test results shocked me at first but I realized that the mid fidelity prototype only made sense to me because I helped make it. It's invaluable to have user's input because it is harder to see design choices that are confusing when you have seen every iteration.
Simple colors make a big impact- When looking to streamline a users experience, adding in quick to recognize colors and symbols allowed them to quickly distinguish one screen from the other even though it was a simple change.