Duolingo, as you may recognize if you've seen Duo the Owl memes circulating the interwebs or a prime victim yourself of Duo's strategic push notifications, is the most popular language learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world with a mission to make education free, fun, and accessible to all. As a well-established app with over 500 million users, and a scientifically proven crafted design that's effective through personalized, adaptive learning lessons with immediate grading, what new feature can possibly be introduced into Duolingo that can make learning even more fun and effective?
As an avid Duolingo user and language learner myself, I've known flashcard learning to be a great way to retain and memorize new concepts, and was curious on why it hasn't been integrated into Duolingo. I scoured through the depths of the Duolingo forum and discovered that Duolingo had already launched a flashcard companion app in 2016 called Tinycards— where users could seamlessly practice Duolingo lessons in the form of flashcards and create, download, and share their own flashcard decks. However, the app was sunsetted in September 2020 and now with Tinycards gone, users are requesting for its revival in the discussion forum and relying on other methods to complement their Duolingo learning.
*This is a conceptual project and not directly affiliated with Duolingo.
Design Thinking Process
UNDERSTAND
Market research and the potential of flashcards
Based on the established Tinycards user base, I started off with an assumption that a flashcard feature would be useful and an effective learning tool for users to complement their language learning journey on Duolingo. In order to help validate this feature, I used different methodologies to address the potential and effectiveness of flashcards.
Through initial secondary research, I was able to get a better understanding of the benefits of flashcards:
Flashcards are effective study materials that help engage active recall
Flashcards engage your metacognition
Flashcards allow for confidence-based, spaced repetitionand improves long-term memoryretention
Flashcards tied with adaptive learning can drive motivation and support recall in both in the moment and long-term
Next, I conducted several 1-on-1 user interviews with language learners to learn more about their current learning journey to uncover any habits, needs, motivations, and pain points they've encountered along the way. Based on the four interviews, three participants (two being Duolingo users) touched on the habit of using real flashcards or a flashcard app to complement their learning, which helped further validate the potential of the feature and revealed possible opportunities to explore on during ideation.
MOTIVATIONS
Duolingo provides consistent feeling of accomplishment with the daily streaks and visual cue of lesson circles filling up
It's fun and feels like a game so it doesn't feel like sitting down and studying
Learning language to be able to connect with family
NEEDS
More context behind certain sentence structures or conjugations beyond just the vocabulary
Convenient access and ease of use on both desktop and mobile
More advanced levels on Duolingo
FRUSTRATIONS
Duolingo is slow pacing and unable to review things over again
Duolingo feels like a chore to keep up with the daily streak, no offering much to keep up with it
No metric to measure how well you're improving
Understanding that there's a potential for this feature, I moved into competitive research to see how other brands are using the concept of flashcards (if any) in their apps to help uncover any existing design patterns that can contribute to future solution attributes or lead to a potential competitive advantage.
Because the spectrum of language learning is so large and fragmented with many different types of platforms, I simplified my research to review a mix of language learning apps and flashcard specific apps. Through this analysis, I found that there was an opportunity to integrate some form of customizable flashcard review options for users who seek this through the use of other applications.
All four language learning apps have a form of customized or customizable review options for learning with 3/4 apps automatically aggregating all vocabulary into one place
None of the language apps provide users the option to create their own flashcards for review
Flashka is the only app that has a direct sync with your Duolingo account that provides an accurate aggregation of words learned from the course lessons
Flashcard apps like Anki provides users the ability to customize their own deck of flashcards fit to their exact needs but require much more effort
DEFINE
Crafting the job statement and JTBD features
After uncovering the potential opportunities for this feature to expand on, I used a jobs-to-be-done approach to develop a user story through my persona Oliver to hone in on a minimum job that would address the frustrationsthat were revealed through user interviews.
Meet Oliver
Oliver booked a solo trip to go to Spain this fall. He has some basic knowledge of Spanish but is looking for a way to continually practice and retain his knowledge, so that he is able to have basic conversations and read Spanish when he gets there. He finds it hard to maintain motivation to keep practicing but thought Duolingo’s daily streak and weekly leagues could keep him accountable, so decided on Duolingo as his main app to use.
JTBD Features
IdeatION
Using HMW to inform design decisions
I explored a variety of methods from HMW to sketches and wireframes to flesh out the flashcard feature with the above JTBD attributes that could be seamlessly integrated with Duolingo's current design system, brand guidelines, information architecture, and user flows.
How might we...
provide Oliver with a way to review Spanish to his liking without having to redo an entire Duolingo lesson?
motivate Oliver to review Spanish?
provide Oliver with a way to practice sentence structure and conjugations?
integrate a way to measure Oliver's improvements throughout this language learning journey?
Solution attributes inspired by competitor design patterns and existing designs:
automatically save all words learned from lesson to flashcards (mimic the current lesson tree/checkpoint setup) and leverage the tree/checkpoint setup as additional entry points to the flashcards
incentivize users with gems/XP to challenge timed quizzes as an additional way to help meet the daily streak or move up on the leaderboard
incorporate cards that test users on conjugations, sentence structure, or grammar and provide users with an option to add their own cards to personalize their learning
track weekly progress and use number of words learned/mastered as a metric to show progress and include a way for users to self-assess their knowledge of the cards and can auto-categorize flashcard sets based on their own ratings
*Included above are some images to showcase the existing lesson tree, personalized lesson and challenge content, along with how progress is being tracked
Prototype
A customizable flashcard lesson flow
I focused on the customizable aspect of the feature with the assumption that Duolingo's machine learning can automatically assess users' knowledge of words that are mastered, needs work, or missed. Users are able to easily access the feature to create a personalized lesson tailored to their current Duolingo learning journey.
Quick Access
Users have 3 access points to the flashcard feature—bottom nav bar, individual lessons, and through the various checkpoints
Quick Access
Users have 3 access points to the flashcard feature—bottom nav bar, individual lessons, and through the various checkpoints
Weekly Progress
Progress tab provides users with weekly stats of words they've mastered, needs practice, or missed with option to practice those directly and options to adjust their weekly goal and to customize their own practice
Customizable Lesson
Users are able to review on their own terms with different option choices for categories that match back to the lesson tree, types of practice, number of cards, and additional features to make it a quiz or add own custom cards
Customizable Review
Users are able to review on their own terms with different option choices for categories that match back to the lesson tree, types of practice, number of cards, and additional features to make it a quiz or add own custom cards
Conjugation Option
Users are able to practice conjugations with these quiz cards that require users to use active recall to fill in the answers
Fastest Record Challenge
To motivate users to challenge the quiz option to test their accuracy and speed, users who can beat their past recorded time to achieve a faster record can receive badges to get more gems and XP points applied to their weekly leaderboard
Fastest Record Challenge
To motivate users to challenge the quiz option, users who can beat their past recorded time to achieve a faster record can receive badges to get more XP points applied to their weekly leaderboard
TEST
Validating designs through usability testing
Based on (11) usability tests, initial impressions were largely positive with almost all users finding this flashcard feature a seamless integration into Duolingo and general concept of it helpful in memorizing and recalling words alongside their current language learning journey on the app. More than half the users also felt this feature would motivate them to continue practicing or motivate them to restart their practice. Though there was overall positive sentiment on this feature addition, validating the true effectiveness of this feature would require much more scientific research and testing.
Usability testing also uncovered a couple areas of confusion that required improvement:
MORE INTUITIVE UI
"everything looks clickable" "everything was popping off like champagne" ''option to do each subject individually"
CONFUSING CTAs
"the language is the same for the button and tab" "customize your review is confusing" "select all button is indistinguishable from the rest"
Designing more intuitive UI
Based on user feedback, I focused on making changes to the UI to help combat the main confusion surrounding the buttons and CTAs.
Simplified landing screen
I condensed the initial two progress and review tabs into one, removed the review buttons, and changed the CTA to 'Start a new practice' to create a more intuitive and smoother flow
Preset Flashcard LESSON
To help combat the 'select all' confusion, I created a preset selection with all options preselected, but giving users the options to edit each individual section or customize it all
onboarding sytle customization
Users are given the option to customize their selection if the preset lesson is not suitable for their needs at that point in time
Simplified landing screen
I condensed the initial two progress and review tabs into one, removed the review buttons, and changed the CTA to 'Start a new practice' to create a more intuitive and smoother flow
Preset flashcard lesson
To help combat the 'select all' confusion, I decided to create a preset selection with all options preselected, but giving users the options to edit each individual section or customize it all
onboarding style customization
Users are given the option to customize their selection if the preset lesson is not suitable for their needs at that point in time
BONUS: Additional Entry point
Due to the complexity surrounding different app developments for each language, some users mentioned that for some languages like French, the bottom navigation already has 6 options so adding a 7th for the flashcard feature might be overkill. To help combat that for other languages, another entry point was added to the top right corner
BONUS: Additional Entry point
Due to the complexity surrounding different app developments for each language, some users mentioned that for some languages like French, the bottom navigation already has 6 options so adding a 7th for the flashcard feature might be overkill. To help combat that for other languages, another entry point was added to the top right corner
Final prototype
Closing thoughts
I started off this project understanding the complexity of learning different languages and knew that Duolingo tailored app features for each of the different supported languages, so it was a challenge to accurately apply Duolingo's established branding and design guidelines without visibility beyond what I've been exposed to or able to research and gather. I feel like I barely scratched the surface on working with an established design system, but it definitely opened up my eyes to the significance of it and how nuanced it can be to ensure consistent designs across the board and to efficiency scale a feature.
I would have likedto have been able to test out and analyze the Tinycards app to see how it was designed or tested my prototype with past Tinycards users to understand their experience and see how this feature compares. There are also many other aspects of this feature I'd like to explore with the intention to better match the needs and language learning journey of the user— such as the flows of rating each flashcard in a non-quiz setting and adding your own custom flashcards.
