Overview
Motivated by personal experiences in overcoming language barriers, I chose Duolingo for a 24-hour design challenge to explore ways to make Duolingo more engaging and inclusive to different learning preferences.
I aimed to create a new feature that broadened Duolingo's reach and potentially improved accessibility to language learning for diverse user demographics.
Through this, I was able to explore augmented reality interfaces as a means to bridge the gap between technology and real-time language learning.
Market Research
Duolingo stands out in the language learning market by offering a gamified experience with a wide range of free language courses, including unique offerings like High Valyrian from Game of Thrones. I also looked into Duolingo's competitors, Babbel and Rosetta Stone, to find their distinct value propositions and drawbacks. This research included a literature review of existing SWOT analysis, including this Medium article where I took the following image.
Opportunities for Growth
I used personas to pinpoint pain points and create a practical framework for uncovering growth opportunities, ensuring design solutions directly address user needs and motivations.
On-demand translation: Create features that allow users to use Duolingo, not only for lessons, but also for tackling real-world challenges. Duolingo could explore ways to give learners more practical tools to navigate challenging language tasks happening in real life, in real-time.
Personalized Learning: Duolingo can collect more learning data points by allowing learners to input words or phrases they have heard or seen outside of the app. This can further personalize lessons and give learners more freedom over what they are learning.
Augmented & Virtual Reality: Duolingo offers a fun way to learn languages, math, and music. Introducing AR and VR interfaces can introduce new ways of experiencing Duolingo that are fun and interactive, further improving experiences learning with Duolingo.
Customized Lessons: Based on user inputs and preferences, Duolingo can offer learners choices for lesson customization, like what words/phrases learners want to see and how they want to practice (writing, speaking, listening, etc.).
Potential Solutions
Based on the opportunities I found during my research, I explored potential solutions for improving Duolingo. I then assessed each option's feasibility and potential benefits using an impact effort matrix. This helped me visually map the relationship between implementation efforts and anticipated impacts of each solution, considering factors like development complexity and expected user impact.
Real-time translation and feedback: Allows learners to use a camera or text to input unfamiliar words that they are interested in learning. Give learners instant feedback, including audio and text translation, cultural context, pronunciation, and example sentences.
Provide a personal dictionary: Design a personal dictionary that collects past translation searches or directly inputted words to give users control of what words or phrases they want to learn/study.
Real-time grammar directory: This provides learners with a comprehensive guidebook to grammar rules for a specific language. Users can search for rules, conjugation tables, etc., and navigate the directory through a table of contents or direct search.
VR game: Develop a VR Duolingo App that gives learners the option to learn languages with more physical experiences that require body movements, especially because research shows that moving while learning is beneficial and improves retention. This app can be connected to an account and serve as a supplemental way to engage in the material.
Prototyping
After sketching, I moved on to Figma to design the final screens. The final screens were crafted with consideration for diverse user preferences and needs, enhancing language learning on Duolingo for diverse types of learners.
Potential Impact
Immersion: Empower users to take their learning into their own hands by giving them the tools to find words in the real world and integrate them into their Duolingo lessons. Having the option to translate something that is physically around users quickly will break down the wall between Duolingo and the world, creating a more immersive, practical learning experience for users.
Personalization: Capturing data from users about what they are learning outside of Duolingo will lead to more personalized lessons and activities that cater to their specific skill set. Regular lessons will become more personalized, increasing engagement and learning satisfaction. Further, learners will come onto the platform for a new type of learning experience that is arguably more practical and timely.
Real-time Response: Users won’t have to wait to reach another unit to get the answer they are looking for. Learners can get a real-time response when they are frustrated, curious, or want to check their knowledge about a word they want to learn.
Gamification: There exists an opportunity to make translators more fun and engaging. Currently, there is no gamification of translators and there is a disconnect between the positive impact timely translations can have on practical language learning.
Customization: Giving learners more options and ways to learn is a great way to improve the learning experience. Allowing users to bookmark words and instantly create lessons with these selected words will improve learning retention and create a more engaging, enjoyable experience overall.
If I had more time...
Currently, my design only translates one word, which may be frustrating for users, especially if they are trying to translate a sentence. Additionally, if I had more time, I would introduce more ways to gamify the translation process, like adding Duo to the camera with AR or integrating a reward system. I would have also liked to mock up some of the other iterations I sketched up, including the personal dictionary, and explore the customizable lessons a little more, as I didn’t have time to sketch or mock up what they might look like.
