The project goal was to redesign Duolingo’s Desktop Dashboard, gathering all the relevant content for the user, and this information must be consumed quickly, with a minimum of interaction or cognitive processing.
Launch ProjectSecondary research, Benchmarking, User research
Persona, Hypothesis
Moodboard, Wireframe, Style Guide
Prototyping
Duolingo is a language-learning website and mobile app. The company uses the freemium model, the app and the website are accessible without charge, although Duolingo also offers a premium service for a fee. The platform offers 98 language courses that teach 39 different languages.
The Duolingo website version has some different features from the Duolingo app version. This project is focused on the dashboard from the website version.
Duolingo is formatted into organized, progressive lessons that constantly giving you positive reinforcement via awards. The main focus is on gamified learning that aims to develop multiple skills, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
According to the "Online Language Learning Market" report from Meticulous Research, the online language learning global market is expected to grow 18.7% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $21.2 billion by 2027. The globalization of the economy, the adoption of cost-efficient technology-based products, and the COVID-19 impact are the main causes of this growth.
Accordingly to the Nielsen Norman Group, "dashboards are collections of data visualizations, presented in a single-page view that imparts at-a-glance information on which users can act quickly."
There are several types of dashboards, the focus of this project is the Platform Dashboard, which is used to give the user access to controls, tools, and analytics related to their account on a platform.
There are several best practices for Dashboard design, like know who the users are and what are their needs, understand what types of graphs you should use to show certain information to the user, use consistent design language and color scheme and after defining the grid, use building blocks with a consistent structure.
A survey was carried out to better understand Duolingo's users. This survey was posted in several groups and forums about Duolingo. The total number of participants was 154. The first part of the survey was conducted with all kinds of Duolingo's users, both app and desktop users. The second part was only for users who use both versions or only the desktop version.
According to the survey, most users are between 20-30 years (27.1%). But we can highlight the number of older users, summing the "51-60 years" (14.2%) range and the "61 or older" (12.9%) range give us the same amount of 20-30 years users, 27.1%.
Almost half of the participants (48.1%) use only Duolingo as an online tool to learn a new language.
As we can see from the chart, the main factors that led users to decide to learn a new language were Brain stimulation (24.7%), Culture (20.5%), and Travel (19.9%).
More than half of the participants (50.7%) choose online language learning because they feel it is a more convenient option.
42.9% of the participants use both APP and Desktop versions, and 13.6% use only the desktop version.
Desktop version users are very assiduous, 62.1% of them use this version every day.
The main reasons they use Duolingo's desktop version are that it has more features (39.8%), like "Stories", "Discuss" and "Dictionary", and it is easier to use (40.9%).
It's important for most users to set a goal (65.5%) when they start to study a language.
The vast majority of desktop version' users (75.9%) like Duolingo's gamification system.
The most important gamification feature for the users is the "Daily Goal", followed by the "Leaderboard" and "Achievements".
The last question was an open-ended question about the missing features in Duolingo. The users aren't happy with the current "Friend" area. 11.9% of the participants would like an improvement on Duolingo's friendship system like a chat between users. Study groups (7.1%) were also mentioned by the participants. And 4.8% of the users would like a level bar for each lesson, and a language weekly progress chart.
Very important
Important
Slightly important
Not at all important
Not at all important
Age: 37
Profession: Accountant
Lee is an accountant who has his office in Sydney. Extremely ambitious and competitive, he always seeks to offer new services and enter new markets. As a practical and self-taught person, he prefers courses that are agile and efficient.
Age: 65
Profession: Retired
Bernice is a retired lady from Houston. Very curious, she loves to learn new things. She is extremely sociable, likes to make friends wherever she is. She has the ability to communicate in public and uses that to help others.
After analyzing all the research data, it was possible to observe that desktop users are pleased with Duolingo's gamification system, but some elements could improve this system, like a level bar for each lesson, element of gamification that show real-time feedback about performance, sense of progression and completion. Other than that, many of them would like to have a better friendship system, like a chat between users and study groups.
Based on the collected data, a redesign of Duolingo's desktop dashboard will be suggested, focusing on showing more statistical data, that will help the user visualize its course progress, without forget about friendship and gamification resources.
Din Next Rounded is Duolingo's typeface for longer sections of text, but in circumstances that we don't have access to the brand fonts, Duolingo recommends we use the substitute font Nunito.
The colors used in the project were chosen from the brand style guide.
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The focus of this study was to design a Platform Dashboard for Duolingo. Therefore, the purpose of the dashboard is to show the course's relevant information and the user's progress data.
A layout divided into three parts was chosen. The first part on the left focuses on the learning area. Started with the brand logo and followed by the learning menu items. The same icons already used in the current dashboard were used to maintain the brand style guide. The items "Chats" and "Study groups" were added to satisfy the user's needs.
The central part is the main area where the cards with the progress data and the leaderboard are shown.
A grid has been defined to consistently organize the cards. Progress bars were used on several cards to create a Zeigarnik effect, where the user tends to remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones. Thus, this effect causes the user to engage with an activity, encouraging him to complete the task.
The last part, on the right, is the user's profile area. Above we have the user's photo with an icon indicating her/his online status and with an icon to edit her/his profile. A menu related to the user was added, with an icon for Notifications, Messages, Help, Settings, and Logout that satisfy the principle of "Match between system and the real world" by Jacob Nielsen.
This project was a good opportunity to learn how to structure a dashboard, using grids and cards. Also, learn more about gamification and the Zeigarnik effect. It was possible to use these learnings to create a dashboard focused on delivering information that could be consumed quickly.
