You’ll see he gets more and more desperate as it nears midnight! We decided to come up with a series of illustrations that would show Duo’s mood at different parts of the day, depending on whether or not you’d done your lesson.

Our goal in working together was to reskin the widget to make it feel more exciting, and, well, more Duolingo. To better utilize this space, our product team partnered with our in-house Design Studio. We immediately started thinking about design, since the widget gets so much more visual real estate than a push notification. We also regularly heard learner feedback that the widget was just as effective as Duo’s iconic push notifications!īut that also made us nervous: If the widget felt like just an extra layer of notifications, why would learners have any reason to keep it installed? How could we make the widget feel unique? Our data indicated that learners using the widget had far better retention on Duolingo, even when controlling for the fact that learners who add the widget tend to be more committed to begin with. Keeping the widget distinctĪs the number of widget users began to climb, we began to see just how effective the widget was in helping learners build habits and keep their streaks. We saw widget installs skyrocket, and ever since then, our team has maintained a workstream on improving the content, placements and frequency of widget promotions in the app. We tested an in-app promotion for the widget after learners finished a lesson, including an animated explainer for how to install the widget. To mitigate this risk, we focused on testing different instruction flows that would prompt learners to download and install the widget. Plus, implementing this widget could take months of engineering resources, and if people didn’t install it, then the opportunity cost would be too high.

However, we quickly realized building awareness about our new widget, and how to install it, would be the primary challenge in making it a successful feature. Once we launched the widget on iOS in July 2022, we saw some early adopters discover and install it on their own. And moreover, the widget allows us to showcase Duo and his memorable personality, something we know learners love and connect with! If you make it, will they download? We don’t need to complicate this with a bunch of other stats or context. To answer that question, we did what Duolingo does best: experimented! Through user research and feature testing, we found that simply reminding a learner of their current streak, and whether or not it’s at risk, is hugely valuable. Did these two pieces of information provide enough utility to warrant a widget? This meant that the only relevant data point we could show learners was whether or not they had done a lesson that day, and the length of their current streak. But in Duolingo’s case, the widget needed to motivate action-we wanted our learners to see the widget, tap on it, and complete a lesson in order to extend their streak. You might look at a widget to see what the weather is, if your stock is going up or down, or the time of your next meeting. Making the widget worth itĪ lot of widgets are passive features. This was because of two big variables: utility and installation. Every hackathon project at Duolingo gets reviewed by leadership, and the widget was chosen as one of the few projects that we should prioritize.Įven though leadership was excited, it took more than a year to bring the widget to life. A group of engineers were excited by iOS 14’s addition of home screen widgets, and wanted to build a Duolingo widget which displayed a user’s most relevant learning stats.

Fun fact: half of the learners with the widget installed have a streak of at least 6 months! An exciting, but complicated, processĪs with several of Duolingo’s most iconic features, the widget initially started as a project during Duolingo’s annual hackathon. We’re always looking for ways to help learners build a language learning habit, and this colorful widget is perfect for anyone who needs an extra visual reminder to practice. We know, we know-sometimes the day gets away from you and you forget to do your Duolingo lesson! While Duo wishes he could literally follow all of our learners around to remind them to practice, he has to settle for slightly easier methods, like perfectly-timed push notifications and our shiny new smartphone widget! Jump to the install instructions here.

Duo mobile redownloading app