Conversational Learning with Duolingo

ROLE: Visual Lead, Team Project TIMEFRAME: 2 Weeks

Duolingo is a language learning application that uses games to teach all the lessons. It is one of the most used language learning applications and is wildly successful, free, and well recognized. Although the app has a plethora of learning options and challenges, it currently lacks person to person conversation practice. My team of UX designers and myself investigated how conversational learning could be integrated into the application. As visual lead, I created both prototypes, all illustrations, and designed all deliverables within the branding guidelines of Duolingo.

What We’re Up Against

To understand more about what’s offered in the world of language learning, my team’s information architect conducted competitive analysis. Despite Duolingo lacking the most features compared to its competitor it remains a top application. Why? We believed it was because of the game based learning but to better understand Duolingo users, we conducted user interviews.

Meet Our Eager Learner | Ella Watts

My team and I crafted a persona to embody all the interview and usability test results findings and keep the user in mind while making improvements

  • AGE: 28
    EDUCATION: College Degree
    HOMETOWN: San Diego, CA
    FAMILY: In a Relationship, Lives Alone
    OCCUPATION: School Psychologist

  • Ella Watts is a vibrant young professional interested in expanding her learning opportunities in any way she can. She’s currently been learning Spanish with Duolingo. She took some classes in high school, but didn’t pick it back up again until recently. She is highly motivated by keeping up with her streak (567 days) and has a desire to expand her language capabilities for her job as a school psychologist. Although Ella loves the Duolingo app, its lack of ability to practice conversations is frustrating. She wants to be able to apply her knowledge from the app in the real world and is struggling to do so without access to conversation partners in real life or in app. Talking to someone else in Spanish is appealing for her goals, but Ella also fears embarrassing herself while she is learning how to converse.

  • • Wants to be able to communicate with friends/ family in Spanish

    • Would like to feel comfortable learning a new language without the judgment of making mistakes


    • Wants skills learned on DuoLingo to translate to real life situations

  • • Little access to conversation partners to practice with

    • Hard to feel confident about how skills learned in Duolingo will apply in real life

  • Ella needs a safe, fun, and flexible way to practice conversing in Spanish to reach confident, real-world fluency because she feels nervous about how her skills will translate in real life.

DuoScenarios | Midfi Prototype

My team and I brainstormed how we could help users like Ella gain confidence in their conversational skills while utilizing a game based learning format. We referenced different dialogue interfaces in other games like Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and even Hades. Together we came up with an interface we felt confident to take into testing.

So How Does It Work?

Available in the header of each unit, DuoScenarios is an optional lesson plan that gives users a chance to practice the content learned in each unit in a conversational setting with the hope of increasing user comprehension.

When DuoScenarios is opened, users will read an introduction to what it is, and are prompted with the first scenario. To unlock more scenarios, users need to keep progressing in their lessons. They will be matched with a partner who is in their unit, and a new interface will open.

Duo will act as a guide to ensure the conversation stays within the constraints of the unit and partners will take turns recording a sentence or two, and responding to each other.

My team and I felt confident we had a great foundation for testing. Below you’ll see some more details about the interface design.

What Went Wrong

As it turned out, we were right! Our midfi prototype was a great start. However, every user failed the tasks within our testing parameters so we definitely had work to do.

Making Changes

Despite the poor performance of our midfi prototype, we felt the changes that needed to be made were fairly straightforward. We quickly got to work and addressed the following problem areas

High Fidelity Prototype

Our team got to work on the changes and we were able to perform one usability test. The results were promising. You can check out the prototype here or check out side by side comparisons below

Further Suggestions

Talk with a Friend

Duolingo has a basic friend and follow function. We believe that adding the option to practice conversation with friends could be a great opportunity to build community and connection amongst friends - perhaps even challenging each other or earning rewards for doing do.

Custom Avatars

Allowing users to create avatars in the Duolingo illustration style could be a fun way to allow users to retain a level of anonymity while conversing with strangers. It would also make the UI during conversations feel more personal!

Rewards System

To make conversation practice more appealing for users less likely to use the feature, adding a reward system for participating could be a great way to encourage users to practice.

Lessons Learned

As I look back at this project and reflect, I think the biggest lesson I learned is that user testing, especially for a game-like function, is essential. Of course I knew this but to see an interface I designed and felt very confident about fail really solidified it for me.

Working on a team for this project was really satisfying. I felt we were able to go deeper into research and testing and really take those results and apply them to the design. We were able to remind each other constantly to keep the user in mind, and I think we did so at high success.