Duolingo Delights

Task Determine one thing Duolingo could improve and create a 1-3 page product specication document for your proposal. The scope of your change should be something that can be
achieved by 1-4 engineers in 3-6 months.

Objectives

Culture may even be described simply as

that which makes life worth living.
-T. S. Eliot (1948 - Notes Toward a Denition of Culture)
Create a platform where Duolingo users can learn more about the culture around the language theyre trying to learn and not just the grammar.
This objective will be achieved by inserting mini culture-related tasks throughout the users
learning process.
These culture-related tasks will be calleddelights.

Features
Each language will have delights specically associated with it that a user can get recommended to complete while leveling up in the language.
Each delight is meant to encourage the user to explore more cultural aspects related to the
language through food, music, and video recommendations.

CATEGORIES
Delights come in 3 key categories meant to introduce cultural aspects of the language to the
user:
1. food
2. music
3. video

The reason books and news are not mentioned right now is because the delights aim to be a
break from the heavily text-based platform and are meant to be more visual and hands-on in
nature.
Each delight itself will have a diculty level, a content rating, or both associated with it.
Food delights, for example, will be not be given a diculty rating but have a content rating
associated so adults can still get alcoholic recommendations (French wine, German beer,
etc.)

DIFFICULTY LEVEL
Each delight can be associated with a 1 of 3 diculty tier levels:
1. beginner (Level 1+)
2. intermediate (Level 10+)
3. advanced (Level 20+)
There are 25 levels in each language in Duolingo so there is room for discussion as to when
exactly a user should be considered intermediate or advanced.
CONTENT RATING
Each delight can be associated with 1 of 3 age ranges:
1. kid
a. only G-rated delights
b. 12 and under
2. teen
a. only PG and PG-13 delights
b. 13 to 18
3. adult
a. PG-13 and R
b. 18+
Users will have to submit age in order to see anything beyond G-rated delights which is the
default rating for delights.
The older you are, the more delights you can see in general.
Adults can see all delights, regardless of what rating they are.
Teens can see G-rated delights but not any R-rated delights.
SCORING & FEEDBACK
Delights are optional but if the user completes them, some amount of XP should be given.
After user checks that theyve completed them, Duolingo can ask for feedback (Did you enjoy
this delight?) by providing a rating slider with an excited face on one end (I loved it!) and a
neutral face on the other (could be better).

USER STORIES

10-year-old trying to learn French Level 2

food delight - croissant with nutella

music delight -Frre Jacques

video delight - PGCaillouTV show

15-year-old trying to learn French Level 13

food delight - macarons

music delight - La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf

video delight - PG-13The Triplets of Belleville

25-year-old trying to learn French Level 22

food delight - Bordeaux wine

music delight - Bella by Maitre Gims

video delight - R-ratedAmeliemovie

Impact
If a Duolingo user gets tired of getting tested on vocabulary and grammar, they have
thesedelights to fall back on that will keep them engaged and get relevant cultural knowledge in a fun way. Delights are meant to be laid-back and optional and are there
Another aspect that physical classrooms try to provide through cultural outings or exercises
will now be integrated into Duolingos platform, thereby appealing more potential and existing users.
After the feature is released for a while, analytics data can be looked through to see which
delights users enjoy the most for each language, which would Duolingo a leg up when it
comes to understanding what appeals to users when theyre trying to immerse themselves
in a language.
PARTNERSHIPS
This partnership is assuming that recommendations will be more specied and customized
for users.
In order to avoid a lot of tech debt in the recommendation area, Duolingo could partner
with several or a few key companies that specialize in recommendations for food (Yelp,
Google), music (Spotify, YouTube), and video (YouTube, IMBD). In exchange for getting tailored recommendations, Duolingo oers a market of millions of diverse users.

Timeline
1. User-testing
a. where delights should be placed in existing interface
b. how the delight recommendations should be worded when alerting user
2. Come up with delights

a. for starters, it would just be for two languages (Spanish & French)
b. one team could be food, another music, and another video within larger language
teams
c. there would be plans to expand to more like with Duolingo Bots once feature is
launched and proven successful
3. Review delights
4. Categorize delights into age range
5. Categorize delights into content rating
6. Create relevant visual assets for delights
a. food
b. music
c. movies
d. books
e. art
7. Integrate delights into existing platform for just beta users
a. analytics should be wired in for feedback component
8. After iterating on feedback from beta users, prepare for nal release
9. Launch plan for marketing and creating assets for those
10. Launch new feature and release news on relevant sites (social media, Product Hunt,
company website, etc.)
11. Iterate

Risks

choosing appropriate delights for age ranges

making recommended delights as accessible as possible

food recommendations could get complicated for certain folks (gluten-free, vegetarian, etc.)

legal issues with recommendations

a way to combat this is to just make all delights G or PG rated

parents may dislike the idea of having their kids get certain content recommended
to them

how can one verify whether user acted upon delight

CREDITS

Duolingo Owl holding French baguette

INSPIRATION

FluentCity

anew culture school where people come together to explore food, drink, art, language, and beyond

OTHER IDEAS

Duolingo Combat

Duolingo Books for Kids

battle your friends who are at the same skill level in dierent language exercises

kids can read books about the Duolingo owl in two languages side by side

Duolingo Entertainment

partner with media companies to provide foreign lm recommendations to users

based on skill level