Is Duolingo unethical?
Guilt-tripping learners to grow their business, or genuinely witty?
I suppose you know Duolingo, the bite-sized, gamified language-learning app with a green owl as its mascot.
I’ve been using this app again since I moved to the Netherlands a couple of months ago to help me learn basic vocabulary and structure.
I’m on my 107th streak as I write this.
I've been quite slow these past few weeks and have used my streak freeze to maintain my streak without practicing. I love it so far, though maintaining habits is not easy. Experts say that habits become stronger and stickier after 66 days. However, in my case, they haven't become stronger—only stickier—in maintaining the streak.
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Marketing strategy or growth experiment?
Last week, I saw a LinkedIn post from the VP of Design at Duolingo. He shared new job openings and discussed how their illustrations have a real business impact. He mentioned their app icon, which has been a hot topic online. They changed it from cute to sad and old-looking, and it's gotten tons of people to open the app and do a lesson.
What is interesting is that the opinions are quite polarized.
Some people love the idea as a form of motivation, while others feel it's unethical, deceptive, and guilt-trips people. Meanwhile, when I went down the rabbit hole, I found that people on TikTok and Twitter were being hilarious about the sad, old Duo. I hope they are not buzzers.
The Head of Social responded that Duo's old and sad face was due to Duo being tired of having to remind everyone to do their lessons.
Some people theorized that the melted Duo face is part of a global warming campaign.
One Reddit post mentioned that the old and sad face has been removed.
I have a theory that it was a combo of marketing and part of a growth experiment to reactivate learners. It’s clever; they use one strategy to capture people’s attention while also employing a behavioral concept called negative reinforcement to encourage users to come back to the app.
Using negative reinforcement to influence behavior
After talking with my wife, who is a behavioral coach, I learned that Duolingo uses a concept from behavioral psychology called negative reinforcement. This means making something unpleasant to encourage a certain behavior.
In Duolingo’s case, seeing the sad Duo character makes users want to log in and make it happy again. This encourages users to keep using the app. They feel good when they make Duo happy and get rewards and streaks.
However, negative reinforcement can be a double-edged sword; it might either motivate or discourage people. Some users dislike the sad Duo because it feels discouraging and makes using the app less enjoyable.
So, is using a sad Duo character unethical or deceptive, or is it similar to when a parent gets upset to encourage better behavior?
It’s a tough question.
Duolingo's use of the sad Duo character can be seen as manipulative because it affects users' behavior. However, it's not necessarily straightforwardly manipulative. Here are some key points to consider:
Business vs. User Benefit: Does the sad Duo mainly benefit Duolingo while negatively impacting users?
User Experience: Does the sad Duo make users frustrated or regretful after their actions?
Ideally, habits should be driven by personal motivation. However forming habits is challenging, and extrinsic factors like negative reinforcement can play a role.
Personalization could be the answer
Different people respond differently. For someone highly motivated, like 'Driven Dave,' the sad Duo might be a useful motivator. For someone more laid-back, like 'Casual Calvin,' it might feel more discouraging.
For instance, negative reinforcement might be less appropriate for kids, as pointed out by a Lego product director, whose 9-year-old daughter received the question, “How do you say quitter in Spanish?” from Duolingo for failing to keep up her daily streak.
Tailoring messages based on the user's age and preferences, as suggested by Nir Eyal, could improve the experience.
So, is Duo unethical for using guilt to boost business, or is it a well-intentioned tool that just needs to better adapt to individual users? Let me know your thoughts.
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