Member-only story
Forming Good Learning Habits with Duolingo UX

The first time I learned about Duolingo was through a meme — the one where Duo (the owl mascot), would ‘threaten’ users with passive-aggressive notifications if they didn’t continue using the app.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but with this year’s turn of events, I decided to learn Japanese on my spare time. It’s been four months since I started, and I’ve observed some design choices that made the learning experience more enjoyable and friendly. I wanted to talk about these design choices and share my thoughts about them.
Using Gamification as a Motivator
Keep the Streak Alive
Streaks are a gamification mechanic that keep track of a user’s daily progress towards a completed action (finishing a lesson). They’re great for habit forming as they provide positive reinforcement for an action, giving the user a sense of achievement.
Duolingo makes it easy to start streaks, as users are able to set their own daily goals; 5 minutes; 10 minutes; 15 minutes per day, and so on. Five to ten minutes per day seems relatively easy compared to taking a weekly hour-long college class — I guess the takeaway from this is to break down the task and make it easier, so that users are…