2 Comments
User's avatar
Alex Debecker's avatar

Duolingo are masters at this. I suppose a learning app lends itself quite nicely to this type of initiative (as opposed to, say, a news reading app). I wrote a short wargame on introducing a gamified chatbot to Duolingo a little while back: https://alexdebecker.substack.com/p/pm-wargame-use-ai-to-improve-duolingos

My biggest point of contention with gamification is the second-order impact it may have. Like you say, it's not all about the numbers.

Are people really learning better due to Duolingo's games? Or are they just progressing through levels because it's fun? It's a never-ending optimisation loop for the company. You want to be careful entering that loop because you're never quite sure how the game(s) might impact the long-term experience of your app.

Expand full comment
Orhan Benli's avatar

Exactly Alex, thanks for sharing!

Expand full comment