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It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

leejo.github.io

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Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#151

Post by ben_w »

fullstackchris wrote: post #81

Yes, but this is certainly a key to their success. They bring people back even after 2, 3, days, or even a month! Duolingo doesn't care _when_ you come back, as long as you _do_ come back. I was an earlier adopter of duolingo, and it's amazing to see how huge they've become. Overall I think it's an awesome platform; they've done very well with the entire design and clean UI of the site / app.

Also an early adopter. For me, the current UI is the absolute worst part.

I don’t want animated cartoons emoting — often incongruously with the sentences, but even when the emotion suits they are grossly exaggerated — in response to correct answers. I don’t want the “motivational” messages that remain even after disabling motivational messages. I definitely don’t want the “motivational messages” toggle to randomly reactivate, spamming me with far more quantity of annoying messages interrupting my flow. I don’t want the news feed. I don’t want the “lesson complete!” screen, followed by how many skills I’ve restored today, followed by my position on the league table if that changed, and possibly one un-skippable animation of a chest opening for each of the Daily Quest goals I met.

I do want the quizzes to load quickly, and (when on the web) to be openable in background tabs so I can queue up all the specifics I want to revisit in a session — years ago now, I did that with the entire German course, revisiting each lesson once over two days.

But you’re right, they don’t care so long as people keep coming back.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#152

Post by g9yuayon »

Speaking of language learning, I wish Duolingo could come with leveled readers. We build our intuition on languages only when we see words and phrases used in different context. Somehow it's hard to find good Spanish readers, compared with ample readers in English. I was trying to read the reading materials for the Mexico first graders (https://libros.conaliteg.gob.mx/primaria.html), oh boy, there are just too many new words for me even though I was at Duolingo Spanish unit 5. I used to use a reader called America Today. The book 2 talked about all the natural wonders of the US, and the book 3 talked about the America society: a day of supermarket manager, a day of a big city, and etc. The difficulty of the book was so well arranged that I had no problem progressing through it, and I had no problem with English grammar or day-to-day vocabularies after finishing the series.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#153

Post by jammu »

I love that Duo streak is hard to lose, unlike other apps where if you miss a day streak is gone. The goal of app is to help you keep learning. In life things are bound to happen because of which you might miss couple of days or more, it make no sense to penalize you for that. I have been trying to maintain streak in other apps but I when I miss a day, I am not motivated enough to go back and start again. Also, streak is only one gamification point in Duo, it's ok if it isn't perfect. Leagues, stories, medals provide enough motivation to keep making progress. I have tried to learn french multiple times and nothing made me stick to my learning routine like Duo has. It might not teach the language to hold a conversation, but I like how much progress I have made reading front.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#155

Post by bombcar »

jammu wrote: post #153

I love that Duo streak is hard to lose, unlike other apps where if you miss a day streak is gone. The goal of app is to help you keep learning. In life things are bound to happen because of which you might miss couple of days or more, it make no sense to penalize you for that. I have been trying to maintain streak in other apps but I when I miss a day, I am not motivated enough to go back and start again. Also, strea…

Dailies are great for getting you to come back, but losing a streak can be enough to make you reconsider your life and never come back; especially when you were doing it out of habit and not really "into" it anymore.

Cf: World of Warcraft

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#156

Post by OJFord »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #61
iratewizard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Duolingo for about a year and they definitely have a lot of stuff like that built into the gamification. Often times, though, playing the game they designed is counterproductive. I've broken 100+ day streaks twice now because I realized I was only putting in the minimum for the sake of the game. I've found it better to take a month off here and there so that I can come back and focus on my actual goals. The…

Does the app work? I don’t mean the gamification: I mean, are you becoming fluent (or even just literate) in the language outside of the app?

I found it a very effective way of learning a new script (devanagari) but I'd have really struggled to answer sentence based questions without studying at all outside the app. (I'm reading Snell's textbooks on Hindi, and have finished the Duolingo course.)

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#160

Post by hintymad »

sireat wrote: post #131

Duolingo must have psychologists on staff who realized the insidious side of the "keeping the streak". One of the happiest days in my life was the day after losing the streak on 750words a few years ago. I had a 500+ day streak going but it had not built into an effortless habit (like a cold shower). Surest way to misery is feeling forced into doing something yet not getting enjoyment nor showing any improvement. I a…

Duolingo's founder is a world-class researcher on user experience. I'm sure he himself has deep insight into human psyches.
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