Guide to make your product addictive : Duolingo Business Case Study

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VIDEO INTRODUCTION:

Hi everybody,

My best friend Mayur is by far the most insincere guy I have ever met other than myself!! He and I never completed assignments on time, we were always late to college and we barely passed our engineering!! But surprisingly, last week I discovered that Mayur is learning a new language using an app and he has been doing the exercises for 180 consecutive days without missing a single day! And this is not because Mayur is a changed person but because the app by design makes him complete the exercise! And when I checked the stats, I found a goldmine of product design which every edtech company must use to scale their business!

This company that I am talking about is called Duolingo!
If you’ve ever learnt a foreign language, there’s a high chance you’ve used it, or perhaps you’ve used it for foreign language testing (DET), or at least you’ve seen its popular green owl mascot - Duo.

Duolingo was started in 2011 by a computer science professor and his student with a mission to make education free and accessible to people worldwide. Today, with over 800M downloads and 2 million DET test takers all over the world, it is safe to say that its the company that changed the face of language learning and testing forever.

They made this possible by hacking its learning design to such a level that, while the top language learning apps in the world had total app downloads of 26.7 million (26,728,041) in January of 2024, duolingo alone stood at 16.2 Million downloads in January alone! So duolingo has more downloads than its 10 competitors combined! And its retention rate is so high that its more than best performing games like Candy Crush and Royal match!! And now they are using this model to solve even bigger educational problems from English proficiency testing to teaching math and even music!

And this extraordinary difference is the result of an insane product design strategy that have been used by legendary products like Instagram, facebook and Snapchat!

So if you want to similarly design legendary products and crack the code to customer retention please take notes from this episode!

So let’s dive into this case study and understand,
How on earth did the designers of Duolingo crack the code to learners engagement?
How are they using this model to solve other challenges in the language ecosystem today?
And most importantly, what are the lessons that we need to learn from the incredible product design of Duolingo?

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#thinkschool #businesscasestudy #geopolitics Credits: CNN-News 18, WION, NBC News, Money control pro, Business standard, TV18,Business Today, ABC news, CNBC, ET now ,Bloomberg originals, Financial Times, DW documentary, AL Jazeera English, BBC news, Firstpost. Fair use - This video is for educational purposes only. All materials used in this video, including images, audio, and video clips, are the property of their respective owners and are used here under the doctrine of fair use. This video is intended to provide commentary, criticism, research, and education on the subject matter. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

[vedant]

Once i broke my 170 days Duolingo streak.
I still cannot physically recover from that day.

[burhanuddinsakarwala]

Duolingo is crazy. It gives you a good basis to start learning a language, a working vocabulary and daily effort is what it gives you, the rest you can study through classes, songs, films etc.

[darkhawk]

I can totally imagine the Duolingo bird put Ganesh at gunpoint to make this video 💀

[bmuthupanti]

This is an awesome app. My son has been learning French in this app for past 10 months. Never missed a single day. Learning is all about consistency. This app is encouraging that consistency in learning.

[lashmanan]

I have been using this application for more than 900 days...❤

[WhirledPublishing]

I went to the duolingo page and selected their tutorial for the Latin language - they asked me if I was new to the language, I am - but since I speak French, Italian and Spanish, I told them I know a little - so they asked to test me to see where the tutorial should begin - they began asking me questions - and I was answering - getting most of the questions right - but occasionally missing one or two words in a sentence - anyway, I decided they are so excellent that I looked into getting a job with them - that's how happy I am with their tutorial - just thought I'd mention it.

[Madhusudhan]

Duolingo helped me in learning German and French. It's so intuitive and makes you come back everyday.

[jayeshkomalwar]

As a UX designer, this video really matters and a great example of how user-centric products do work. A fan of how Duolingo has changed the way Edtech should build products.

[bepositron]

I tried to learn French on Duolingo. It was a Great experience ❤

[shikhabasak]

The range of topics you cover in your videos are incredible! I clicked on the video the second I saw the green bird 😂
My takeaway from this video:
Either find a job with duolingo or with think school... dono me data science interesting lagega 💯

[samitghosh]

Great episode.. Actually I was thinking why the channels like yours took so long to make a video on a startup which has been a game changer. I am 631 days + on Duolingo French. It is so positively addictive that I feel panicked on any day when I did not complete a lesson by 5pm. Excellent presentation Ganesh.. Keep your always great work even better...

[asadhanifrajpoot]

Your video is not just a case study, but an amalgamation of psychology and new ideas. I am getting so many ideas after watching your video. I never comment but to you Thank you!

[alok.]

12:48 that felt personal 😅, I was just casually playing this in background then he said about not using Facebook but still keeping the account

[thatguy]

Video suggestion for the next video : India's Luxury housing boom or how luxury brands thrive even during crises

[thatguy]

Although Duolingo's high retention rate might seem eye catching, it does not translate into high conversion rates. Most of its users still use the free model and the ability of their competitors to get things done with a smaller team and lower cost might challenge their hegemony. Nonetheless, it has started showing profits in the last two quarters and I'm excited to see how the future plays out for Duolingo.

[nitishchandraPatil]

Thanks for this video. This is really a brilliant usecase in the current business scenario. Also, it makes it very easy to learn other languages such as Deutsch, French and Spanish which in my case, Deutsch, where I was able to learn till A2 level successfully.

[sheetalaklujkar]

You are Awesome Ganeshprasad..! You are inspiring millions of lives by your intelligent casestudies..keep up the good work !

[shagbora]

I don't use Facebook anymore but the reason I don't delete it is not because of the efforts I made but because of the number of apps it connects to 😅 maybe we need a poll to see why people keep Facebook still.

[Elixir]

Awesome case study. It's the only learning app I'm using everyday.
One more thing I liked about this app are those characters who're not interactive as such but they sound interactive.

[hanu]

Hey Team Think School I've been a fan of your insightful financial contents. Your ability to break down complex topics is impressive. Could you please consider creating a video on the current Andhra Pradesh Pradesh financial position? Your expertise would be invaluable in helping the citizens of the state to understand and navigate the economic landscape. Looking forward to another enlightening video as the current media has totally confused everyone.