Duolingo Handbook(handbook.duolingo.com)
handbook.duolingo.com
Duolingo Handbook
https://handbook.duolingo.com
13 comments
i'd wish if retention was about useful features, but alas it is not.
in modern day retention = any dark pattern and emotional manipulation trick to keep you "engaged" without actually learning, because if you learn something you would of course stop using the thing and watching great ads.
in modern day retention = any dark pattern and emotional manipulation trick to keep you "engaged" without actually learning, because if you learn something you would of course stop using the thing and watching great ads.
I’d like to know when this was created and if people who work at Duolingo even know the existence of it. The app is filled with ads on the free tier, with ads appearing after every single lesson. I’ve seen this for over a year. If anything, they don’t make courses universally available. They make them universally annoying.
Even if they’re targeting specific users for the ads to upgrade, they shouldn’t make it so annoying. If they want the (freeloading) user to leave the platform, then they should stop notifications bugging the user to not break the streak.
Something is very wrong with how Duolingo’s ad system is implemented. With this background, I can’t believe that they follow anything from this handbook that was probably written at the start by someone who’s no longer with the company.
Even if they’re targeting specific users for the ads to upgrade, they shouldn’t make it so annoying. If they want the (freeloading) user to leave the platform, then they should stop notifications bugging the user to not break the streak.
Something is very wrong with how Duolingo’s ad system is implemented. With this background, I can’t believe that they follow anything from this handbook that was probably written at the start by someone who’s no longer with the company.
The incentives are such that ad infested products eventually turn to shit.
"Don't do dumb shit" is a great product principle
Honestly, it seems like their principle lately is actually 'Do dumb shit'. They have been gradually making the app worse with the only goal being moving customers to the most expensive subscription tier. For example, I am a Super tier subscriber (not Max) and they decided that paying to not see ads doesn't apply to them showing ads for the Max tier.
They also are pushing their AI (I think) 'video call' feature which I have no interest in. I have been a long term subscriber but I am not renewing in April. It's just not worth it anymore, and this doesn't even take into account issues with the language lessons themselves.
I respect that everyone learns differently but I can't stand Duolingo's approach to gamification. Between being treated like I'm 7 years old and being bullied into using gems to keep standing in the leaderboards I just can't do it.
I would pay them extra money to disable all of the gamification features and just let me use the damn language learning parts of the app.
I would pay them extra money to disable all of the gamification features and just let me use the damn language learning parts of the app.
There are a lot of pure language learning apps without the gamification.
Memrise, Lingq, https://nuenki.app (mine :P), etc. The relevant subreddit and languagetools.directory will have more.
Memrise, Lingq, https://nuenki.app (mine :P), etc. The relevant subreddit and languagetools.directory will have more.
I have some news that’ll make your day
Turn off gamification and infantilizing language*
[deleted]
Wholesome and unhinged.
I like that they rejects MVPs. An initial product should have minimal features but be polished unless you are doing something completely new.
My assumption is that long-term user retention is a metric that's difficult to measure and optimize for, and so even if they claim to care, it ends up getting worse over time. If your experiment grows DAU by 1% but makes 0.1% of users leave over the next month, most of that 0.1% isn't even noticed in the week that the experiment is running, and a 0.02% drop in user retention isn't statistically significant. But then you ship 1 of those experiments per week for 5 years, and even though you grew your userbase 12x you end up with 25% worse long-term user retention than you would have otherwise. And then you don't even realize that because it's such a different product compared to 5 years ago that you brush off any changes over that timescale as "our new demographics are inherently less likely to stay and there's nothing we can do" or "society is changing how it interacts with phones and there's nothing we can do." Or maybe I'm being too generous and the reality is "there's definitely something we could do but we're too busy rolling in our fat stacks of cash to care"