Duolingo’s Usability Analyzed
I wish I had the ability to download language files into my brain and become fluent immediately (I’ll take advanced Spanish and basic Korean, please), but it seems like we’re pretty far off from inventing this tech yet. In the meantime, I use Duolingo to learn on the go. At its very basic level, the utility of Duolingo is to learn a new language. While I do have a love/hate relationship with their mascot owl’s daily practice reminder emails, if I go deeper to analyze it from a usability standpoint, there are several features that make it top-notch for anyone to learn and use.
Overall, Duolingo has great learnability — as it should — it’s an education app. After you sign up, it takes you through a simple and easy onboarding process where you choose a language to learn and commit to a time you’d like to practice each day. They use very clear language letting the user know that they can always change these selections later.
The app uses mappings from the real world that users are familiar with, like quizzes and gaming. You start off by testing your skills to see what level you should be placed at. Right off the bat, it’s assessing users where they’re at so they can start them off with the best experience level that will be conducive to their individual learning.
To further help users’ understanding of how the app works, they have gamified the experience to build a framework around the process of learning. You can win achievement badges, after each lesson you get XP (experience points), and you can use your winnings to purchase fun outfits for your owl, very common patterns from the gaming world.
To make sure you actually pick up the language, the app has you learn by doing — answering simple prompts with very clear inputs, starting with simple pictures/word associations, moving into drag and drop sentence building, and makes it way up to advanced free-response and listening/speaking exercises.
The app’s use of visibility and feedback is present in every aspect of their design. The user’s home page shows different topics surrounded by bright yellow progress bars to visually display how far they are on that topic. Progress bars are also present in each lesson to let the user know how many questions are left.
There are great affordances on pieces they want you to interact with — drop shadows on buttons or words that can be dragged around, and the helpful constraints of empty states when the word has already been used or a level is not activated yet.
All of these features combine to produce a user experience that is a breeze to learn, yet challenges you to learn a new language. There’s a lot that we can learn from the Duolingo app about designing for usability so users will have a delightful experience. I am still a far cry from becoming proficient in a language using Duolingo, but I’m a lot farther along than I would ever be using traditional learning methods. I don’t doubt that anyone could pick up the app and learn a few things!
