---
title: Duolingo is an engagement platform
date: 2024-03-06T10:01:40.332Z
slug: 2024-03-06-duolingo-is-an-engagement-platform
author: Thomas Wilson

---
I've had these thoughts in my head for a while, [Dave Rupert published a piece](https://daverupert.com/2024/02/duolingo/) a few weeks ago.  Which really had me in the first half, it's worth a read.

---

I re-downloaded Duolingo in January (*quelle cliché*) and maybe three weeks later booted that owl right off of my phone.

Since about 2012, Duolingo has been on my list of "companies I would actively love to work at", but at the risk of scuppering my future employment opportunities, I don't think that's true any more.

I think learning is hard, and so is adult behaviour change.  So creating a habit-forming product for adults to learn something (like another language) puts your product at a tough intersection.  Faced with that, I think most people would try to:

- Find the smallest meaningful unit of interaction, and push it
- Reward consistent or repeated engagement
- Have a good immediate rewards mechanism: sounds/visual, in-game points or currencies

I have (wholly unfounded) opinions on language learning, but I do have (much more founded) experience of learning in general. 

What Duolingo gets right is that applying newly-learned information frequently is very good for retention.

What it gets wrong, I think, is it makes us equate learning or progress with app usage or engagement.  

This makes sense if you are Duolingo.  You know I am learning Italian because I open your app and show you (for the ninth time this week) that *gonna rossa* is 'red skirt'.

Now let's pretend that I am serious about improving my Italian. I might add a single other activity to my learning.  I might take a 1-1 class online, might watch some YouTube videos, might read some newspapers - whatever.  

This kind of progress is unpredictable, and Duolingo responds not with freedom ("learn whatever you want in whatever order, I am a companion") but with complete constraint ("learn these things, in this order, I am the instructor").

It wants consistent engagement, it rewards you checking-in, and it doing the things it tells you to do.  It uses Dark Patterns (loss aversion, skinner boxes) to promote behaviours. In exchange, it never makes you feel foolish or mocked or out of your depth (which learning in more natural contexts definitely will).

But I think *that's what learning a language is*.  

Using Duolingo annoyed me because those dark patterns worked, almost like they've been refined on millions+ of people.  

But it made me feel more like I had a *tamagotchi*, a little digital pet, that I had to keep happy and alive.  

The final moment came when a high pressured / timed word-matching game.  English words on the left-hand side of the screen, Italian words on the right.  This game was pushed at the end of the weakly *league* feature.  

The game itself is fun: match the pairs as quick as you can.  There are different stages, each with 3 levels.  As far as I can tell, you're not *meant* to get to the end, or at least it becomes exceptionally difficult. 

When time runs out (for me, somewhere around mid stage 2/5), a little pop-up comes up and tells me I can resume if only I paid several hundred of in-game gems. 

My little owl friend: you invited me here to play this game, you tell me it's a great way to earn XP to keep my place in a League (loss aversion).

You are asking for another chunk of in-game currency to ease the pressure of rules for a game *you placed on me*

And I am paying you nearly £10/month (gladly, you offer a service).

Nah. 

I don't think these are the actions of someone who cares about helping people learn something.  I think these are the actions of someone who cares about impulse spending and user engagement.

I think you think quite little of me and I don't think you're treating "help Wilson learn a language" as seriously as I am, and I feel sort of like I just keep on disappointing you. 

I don't know what a modern, considered education system looks like.  I don't think it looks like the lecture-essay-exam structure we have at the moment.  I don't think it looks like atomised, pressurised activities either.

You know what I started around the same time, and have actively wanted to do: the daily chess.com challenges.  The interaction model isn't that different: open app for 3-5 minutes to solve a problem.  Close app.

Thing is, I think chess.com know what they are, an app with a little chess game in.  Yes, they have a Daily Problem and it tracks your streak, but if it gets broken it doesn't get sad at me - it just starts again.  

It doesn't give me a certain kind of problem, ramp up the pressure, then offer to release the pressure for a chunk of in-game currency.

It's just a little chess game.

Maybe this little problem will make you a better player or maybe it won't, but we're not actively making you think it will. 
