duolingo
product design / class project

Duolingo Rooms

about

Creating new ways for people to connect and learn languages in audio community-based chat rooms.

Role

Student

TEAM

3 designers, 1 design lead

Timeline

July 2022 - August 2022

What is Duolingo?

background

Duolingo is a popular educational mobile application providing easy, fun, and engaging language lessons and exercises. Through a gamified experience, users can easily log on and learn languages of their choice through daily challenges and activities.

From our user interviews and affinity maps, we discovered that as Duolingo users advanced in skill, they desired more culturally and socially immersive exercises that Duolingo did not yet have to offer. In this 2 week sprint, we sought to create a new feature for the existing Duolingo app that would help users feel more motivated and engaged in their language learning journey.

project overview

What we worked on.

✦ Research

Our research goals.

Keeping the habit of practicing a new language is hard to maintain, so through our research we aimed to uncover the factors that create an immersive, engaging, and habitual language learning experience.

We wanted to look for the alternative ways competitors structured their language learning platforms besides the traditional vocabulary exercises that are often seen.

Competitors

Noticing a trend with community in our interviews, we asked how the structure of community based platforms could be incorporated with the language learning process.

Comparators

II. third party research

We found Duolingo lacked the community, social, & cultural immersion features that other competitors offered and users found themselves feeling unmotivated after practicing daily for awhile. These were the values we saw users wanted in a language learning platform.

We noticed that while Duolingo had many solo practice activities like their daily exercises, listening practices, & mistake review sessions that other applications did not have, it lacked in live peer to peer interactions and community based activities. 

III. feature analysis

What features are missing in Duolingo?

Three main values we discovered in users.

The habits of Duolingo users.

I. User Interviews

Through our series of interviews, we found that while a majority of users enjoyed using Duolingo and practiced on it daily, they seemed to only stick around relatively short term. Many of them expressed that they simply lost interest or motivation, which got us thinking, why?

research summary

Sense of Community

People want to feel they are learning with a community where they can grow their skills amongst peers.

Fostering Learning Habits

Language learners valued when learning platforms aid them in maintaining consistency in learning.

Cultural Immersion

Learners want to feel they are learning nuanced cultural knowledge on top of vocabulary and basic syntax.

✦ synthesis

Where in the learning journey do we intervene?

Taking what we gathered from our affinity mapping, we wanted to identify where in a user’s learning journey do they seem to lose momentum. What we hypothesized was that as users become more proficient in their skills, the Duolingo practices lack the new level of knowledge they seek — with many of our interviewees expressing that they wished for more cultural immersion & community experiences.

uh oh! looks like as users advance in level, they also crave more advanced resources that are not available on Duolingo.

persona building

Meet Carolina, our Seasoned Duolingo Learner.

Narrowing the problem space

After identifying where in the learning journey our research indicated the need for intervention, we built out a persona that would encompass the needs of a user with an advanced skill level. Meet Carolina, a long term Duolingo user who values community and social interaction in her learning process and has goals of becoming more culturally immersed in the language she is learning.

Identifying major pain points we want to focus on.

pain point no. 1

pain point no. 2

pain point no. 3 

✦ ideation

What’s the solution at the center of our pain points?

Moving into the solution space, our team brainstormed through concept mapping that would address the 3 pain points we identified in our research and synthesis. We wanted to find a feature we could implement that lived at the intersection of the three values we saw in our users.

Concept mapping

To set our goals before sketching, we created a concept map to give ourselves a checklist of items that we needed to incorporate into our solution.

Birth of the audio chatroom idea.

Inspired by the audio-based chatrooms of Discord and Clubhouse, we wanted to brainstorm a way we could incorporate a similar feature into the Duolingo experience. 

User flows we wanted to build out

Taking from our three pain point spaces, we aimed to brainstorm a feature that would lie at the intersection of all of our user’s needs.

Our goals

Three areas of value

While Discord and Clubhouse had open chatroom spaces, we felt that Duolingo needed something slightly more structured, which is how we came up with our topic based rooms — each covering a specific nuanced topic pertaining to speaking skills or cultural knowledge where users could join in conversation with one another.

low fidelity sketches

How will our users move through this feature?

Before creating some higher fidelity wireframes, we created 3 user flows that would outline the basic ways a user could navigate through our chatroom feature. This process helped us narrow in on the key functions we wanted our MVP prototype to perform.

joining a room flow

saving a room flow

set room reminder flow

Keeping users in mind

✦ design

Making iterations & testing out our mid fidelity prototype.

Building on our initial sketch and user flows, we created a mid-fidelity version of our feature. Showcasing how our feature will function and look within the existing Duolingo app.

To test the usability of our design, we conducted a series of tests with prior Duolingo users to access what future iterations could be made as we moved into higher fidelity versions.

Wire framing our basic ideas out.

trends & feedback from users

To test the usability of our design, we conducted a series of tests with prior Duolingo users to access what future iterations could be made as we moved into higher fidelity versions.

Revisions made in our high fidelity designs.

Before

After

Before

After

Our Final Solution

Browse upcoming rooms & set reminders

03. Maintaining Habits & Motivation

Make Duolingo Rooms part of your daily routine by setting reminders for up coming rooms. Browse through these rooms by date, level, and topic.

Raise hand & talk with others

02. Socially Connected Experience

Interact by raising your hand and speaking up in rooms where moderators will guide conversation. Ask questions about the topic, listen to other language learners, and learn in a social enviornment.

Join rooms based on skill & topic

01. Gaining Cultural Knowledge

Enter Duolingo Rooms through the door icon in the bottom navigation where you can then pick skill level and gain your +XP points.

oh look a short video made just for you. don’t be shy, press play!

See it all together.

Future directions & takeaways.

✦ final thoughts   
What else would we do? 💡

  • Developing what the ‘saved’ recordings tab and ‘replay’ tab will look like

  • Running more user interviews and usability tests to measure the impact of our product

What I’ve learned 🌱

  • It’s all about the details — designing within an existing system requires a close attention to detail

  • Making micro animations — learning to design even the smallest of interactions helps craft a delightful experience for the users

well hello there 👋 looks like you’ve made it to the end!