Duolingo Discussions

Problem discovery

How do we use what we learn in everyday language?

In the past my friends have used Duolingo to learn languages where I'm considered a native/proficient speaker. Throughout their journeys learning new languages with Duolingo, I've felt that I've acted as a companion to further their understanding. For example, a friend learning Chinese would often reach out to me to confirm that he had fully understood a new sentence he learned on Duolingo.

Identifying the problem

To figure out what problems to solve, I conducted user interviews with 5 friends to gain a better idea of their process when finding a lesson.

Common insights I found among all of them was

Most are using Duolingo to learn a language they have a personal connection with (ex. friends, family speak it)
Many were learning the language for the first time
Programmed exercises can only really tell you right from wrong - the lack of detail makes it hard to learn nuanced usage.

From there, I summarized their process in a user flow and then outlined my recommended ideal process. This led me to realize that a key point of friction in the learning process was the mobile discussion forums— I would be focusing my design efforts around improving this feature.

Above all, this helped me understand that people look to people they trust — experienced learners or native speakers

for their credibility to validate the learner's comprehension
to gain a richer context of new vocabulary or grammar rules
to pose questions without being judged

Design goals

Find a comparative metric that is universally understood by Duolingo users and can validate user credibility
Increase clarity of discussion forums to help users navigate through repeated questions, and replies seamlessly
Build context to helps users learn to trust one another

Competitor analysis

I looked at current solutions users leverage to confirm their understanding of lessons on Duolingo.

Most importantly, I did a design audit to assess how these platforms are able to measure experience, visually represent credibility, and provide context. For this particular case, I did research around languages questions on each platform to get a more comparable analysis.

I first looked at a subreddit about learning languages and found that it's methods for measuring experience and visual representations could result in comparative inconsistencies.

Measuring Experience
Large variety of professional certifications and experience shown in bio
Visual Representation
‍Country flags with numbers that may represent different measurements of experience
Providing Context
‍Ability to click on user names and view account scores/answer quality to build trust

Quora

Second, I searched how to say a phrase in Korean to analyze all the different ways people are able to articulate their proficiency in Korean on Quora.

Measuring Experience
Users go through an entire seperate process to edit their bio per question. There is no quantifiable measure of experience and results in vague titles (ex. Knows Korean)
Visual Representation
Only text is used due to the relatively wide flexibility users have in creating bios
Providing Context
Usernames are linked to profiles where you can learn more about a person's education, experience, and previous answers.

Duolingo

Finally, I did an audit of the discussion forum on mobile and desktop and noticed a few discrepancies between their designs.

Measuring experience
On mobile, there is an upvote system that helps provide social proof. The desktop version has a 25-level system that does not exist outside the discussion forum - making it unrecognizable for users.
Visual representation
Mobile has no visual representation, while Desktop shows what level you are out of 25 in a certain course.
Providing context
Usernames are not clickable and make it difficult to build trust between users so they can confidently read their answers.

Ideation

Sketches

After synthesizing my user research and competitor analysis, I took the insights and started to think of possible designs for each feature I wanted to design.

Design Explorations

Using my rough sketches as a base, I went through multiple iterations of each features to make sure I was following existing design patterns in Duolingo, and fulfilling the design goals I set.

Final designs

Overall Redesign

After several iterations in my design explorations, I was able to decide on these final designs. To further explain my design decisions, I'm going to break down the final designs into it's separate components and explain my thought process.

Simplified User Flow

By completing the design goals surrounding (1) user credibility, (2) increasing clarity, and (3) building context within the Duolingo app, users no longer need to exit to seek confirmation for their understanding on other platforms.

Building user credibility

I decided to use crowns and XP because user interviews told me that they were the most apparent measurements of success within the app. Crowns especially, are a clear indication of someone’s progress throughout a course for Duolingo users.
An edge case I considered was that Duolingo contributors and moderators would also help answer questions and have no XP or crowns to show. To demonstrate their credibility, I added user tags with their position.

Increasing clarity on forums

To make the content of forums more digestible, I changed the visual hierarchy to easily organize comments and replies.
Speech bubbles help organize comments and replies with new added text from user tags. The grey rounded rectangles also fit in well with Duolingo's current design patterns.
I also added in the ability to comment to add interactivity and keep users within app to ask questions

Building context

During research, I found that many people were trying to click on the person's profile to gain more context as to how they got into the forum and how knowledgeable they really are.
Even though we've added in the user tags to help build credibility and context for users, being able to click will allow them to see their profile information and help users deduce more about other users, without leaving the app

Takeaways + Learnings

Small changes make a big difference

Adding user tags helps to emphasize Duolingo’s company mission of providing free education. Although a quick fix isn’t going to help solve all their problems, the discussion redesign can help to narrow the gap in contextual learning that isn’t as easy to provide through tech/virtual education.

Connecting with personal experiences

As a First-gen child of Chinese parents, I know that learning to speak Mandarin through a textbook at Saturday school vs. personable conversations with my parents are entirely different experiences. For many, those real-life conversations aren't as accessible so I feel happy to be able to redesign a feature that helps bring Duolingo a step forward in closing that gap.