Case study: Duolingo
The objective of this project is to create a Landing Page to advertise and sell a product or service. It should be only 1 page long, containing all the relevant content for the product you are working on.
The Landing Page should be for some well-known brand in the market so I had to choose 1 product or service to create this promotion page. The page should be for the web, in a standard format, without responsiveness, and without concern with mobile.
Given the options, I decided to work with the Landing page of the Duolingo website.
Goals
- Explore the UX Research process, and the impact on the final design.
- Focus on the Landing Page.
- Study and experiment with UI Design.
- Create an enjoyable experience.
The Design process
Problem Investigation
Secondary research, heuristic analysis and essential questions.
Secondary Research
1. The institution
Duolingo is the world’s most popular way to learn a language. Their mission is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.
Founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, the company is valued at $1.5B. It is the most downloaded education app in the history of the App Store and in 2019 became the top-grossing education app worldwide. The app has been awarded Apple’s iPhone App of the Year and Android’s Best of the Best.
Learning a new language used to be expensive; Duolingo believes it should be free. Over 1.2 billion people are learning a second language and most of them are learning English to improve their lives. They believe that it can be fun using bite-sized lessons that feel like playing a game to keep the learners motivated.
2. Users
Duolingo has 120 million users around the world and currently teaches 19 distinct languages. The most popular courses are available for speakers of a variety of languages: for example, you can learn English from 21 different languages!
To find out which languages are the most popular around the globe, they looked at the daily activity of Duolingo users over a period of three months. The data covers all 194 countries.
Figure 1 shows the most popular language studied on Duolingo in every country, and Figure 2 shows the second most popular language.
Source:
https://blog.duolingo.com/which-countries-study-which-languages-and-what-can-we-learn-from-it/#fn1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo
https://www.inmobi.com/blog/2020/03/25/who-uses-apps-to-learn-a-new-language
3. Market
In order not to charge users for the use of the platform, Duolingo has a business model similar to that of Spotify. At the end of each lesson, advertisements are displayed. Those users who do not want to be impacted by advertising pay for the platform subscription and have free access to the ads.
Another interesting format that Duolingo has are certificates that cost, on average, 50 dollars and are accepted by several institutions around the world. The idea is to allow the user to have access to a validated and accepted test by large institutions without needing to demand a large financial contribution, as with other certifications, as is the case with TOEFL.
Duolingo currently has more than 200 million users.
Some importants Duolingo numbers statistics:
4. Duolingo Benchmark
I found out some competitors to compare their strong and weak points, resources, and what contains on Landing Page. I chose by the notoriety of the site, method validated, online lessons, and similar platforms.
Heuristic Analysis
After I analyze the competitors, I made a heuristic analysis to achieve a better comprehension of the role page and its problems to get fixed. I just showed it up what needed to be corrected.
1. Match between System and Real World
Aspects as more reviews of the area or researches should appear to create get stronger trust environment.
Link: 01
2. Aesthetic and Minimalism Design
I noticed some problems regarding aesthetics and information that needs to be organized correctly and get stronger the brand’s message.
Link: 02
3. Help and Documentation
In online courses, users often have doubts and questions. That is why I suggested the following modification:
Link: 03
Essential the questions
1. Who is the user?
Everyone who wants to learn a new language or improve free or paid. The App has a gamification dynamic that can help children and adults.
2. What is the company’s primary objective for this product? Are there secondary objectives?
Primary objectives:
• Offer multiple languages to learn;
• Be practical and easy to use;
• Ease of use on mobile;
• Offer gamification with learning;
• Stand out from competitors.
Secondary objectives
• Stay profitable and expand;
• Reach as many people as possible to profit from the advertisements;
• Winning schools that can use Duolingo as a support for the • Teaching method.
3. What is the focus/objective of the users?
• Learn a little every day;
• Quickly achieve a high level;
• Be confident when speaking a language with foreigners;
• To be able to express yourself sickly with people in another language.
4. What problem will be solved with this product?
• Improve the method of teaching a new language by implementing some means of gamification to help motivate the user.
• Convince that the product is valid for everyone who wants to learn in a dynamic way
• Facilitate the organization of information so that users know about the different ways of using the application.
02 Hypotheses
💡 Add a new topic, such as “People love Duolingo” in which it presents comments from people who approve the use of the application. This gives more credibility and confidence to the user who is using it. These evaluations can be those made by the apple store or google play, for example.
💡 Most people can ask questions and ask questions during registration… Why not add a floating help bar for question topics? This can help more in the user’s decision.
💡 Present a front menu bar for people who already have an account and be able to connect more intuitively in Duolingo.
Ideas
To check if the assumptions I made for this demand are valid, I will test a new layout that includes some ideas following Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics:
1. Give credibility and confidence to future users on the landing page;
2. Insert a menu bar at the top to facilitate searching for information on the website;
3. Improve the presentation and aesthetics of the site itself, call to action, presentation of languages, more striking image.
4. Present a floating help icon, in case the user wanted to search for information or help that is not easily visible on the website.
Wireframe
The changes:
1. I added a login / sign up menu. for the user to find the information more easily.
2. The image of the head page is more attractive, which will attract the attention of possibly new users of the application. indicates more security and gives a more playful air to the brand.
3. All links that were in the form of hypertext I chose to update in the form of a button. This change will indicate that this button is indeed clickable.
Moodboard
I maintain illustrations and Icons, cause they match with the profile of the customers. The information on the main colors and fonts was taken from the Duolingo visual identity manual.
https://design.duolingo.com/
UI Design
This is the UI design for Duolingo Landing Page.
1. I added a log in / sign up menu. for the user to find the information more easily.
2. The image of the head page is more attractive, which will attract the attention of possibly new users of the application. indicates more security and gives a more playful air to the brand.
4. All links that were in the form of hypertext I chose to update in the form of a button. This change will indicate that this button is indeed clickable.
5. The disposition of the contents and information are more aligned and speak more with the design as a whole. besides spacing and color selection.
6. I added a session called “People Love Duolingo”, I realized that most sites intend to give credibility to users by presenting comments from people who already use the system.
7. I chose to add a floating “help” button, to answer the main possible questions that may come to people.
8. Finally, it was necessary to make a diagram on the bottom of the page. which in which I chose to present social media in the form of an icon, to give a more visual touch.
Impact expectations of the solution in six months
With the implementation of such improvements, it is expected:
• Users will find the information they want more easily with a more attractive and consistent layout;
• Any doubts that the user has before signing up, they will be able to check through the FAQ that is in the “help” floating button. This will decrease the number of emails sent to the company;
• They will stand out more from their competitors, giving more confidence and legitimacy with the opinions of users presented on the site.
Thank you for reading (:
