Duolingo engagement tricks

Duolingo is a fascinating app cleverly trying to trick you into learning a language. My wife and I have been playing around with it lately. I'll share how I think it can fit in a serious language learning project, but for the time being I wanted to share all the tricks I found Duolingo uses to keep you in their app. It's a bit of an interesting list as the same approaches would feel shameful coming from a mobile game trying to create addiction among its userbase. But the result of higher engagement on Duolingo is more language learning, so can we really get mad about it?*

1. Emphasizing the importance of adding friends

2. Friends streaks that fail if either party stops the streak. You wouldn't want to let your friends down!

3. Committing to a streak even though this changes nothing

4. Daily quests for daily rewards

5. Weekly friends quests for additional rewards. The two friends need to work together to both get the reward.

6. Big XP and gem reward when a friends quest is successful

7. Lock screen banner if you leave mid-exercise

8. Lock widget to track you current streak number

9. Monthly challenge and associated rewards

10. Chests with rewards only available if you work quickly through the path

11. Supposedly exclusive group of people who maintain long streaks

12. Continuous reward for new levels of streak reached

13. 10 leagues you move through based on XP earned with rewards for finishing at the top of your current league every week

14. Continuous reminder of you moving through the ranks of your league to keep you pushing

15. Make introductions between your friends

16. Apple Watch notification if you leave without finishing an exercise

17. Reminders of your "good" performance

18. Giving you temporary access to the most expensive subscription to hook you into buying it

19. Constant ability and reminders to nudge your friends and members of your subscription

They are other tricks and, sadly, I didn't remember to save all of them. Nevertheless it's an impressive amount of features around retention and engagement. Maybe this will give you some ideas!