Duolingo.

com Case Study

What is Duolingo:

Duolingo is a one of the most popular free language learning platforms with over 400 million
users from all over the world learning over 30 language across their website and mobile app.
The platform uses gamification and rewarding system to make a fun and great experience for
the users in the process of learning a new language.

What are the Principles of design?

Design principles are several laws, standards, and guidelines that is done by researchers and
practitioners to acquire knowledge about users’ behaviours, sociology, and ergonomics. This
knowledge the used to help designers find a way to enhance usability, increase appeal, make
a great user experience, and help making a better and faster decisions during the process of
building a project.

The success of any website depends on how this website has been designed and applying the
design principles will give the website more quality and give users a great experience when
using the website.

Although there are number of principles and laws for design that is changing over time, there
are some rules that can be considers as the most important for any project to be successful,
which are:
1- Simplicity:
When users visit a website, they are there to find some information, so by adding
unnecessary design elements to the website, the users will find it harder to find the
information that they are looking for.
Simplicity means making the website simpler, by removing all the unnecessary design
elements which will give the users a better and faster way to find the information they
need and making the website more appeal without all the slick unnecessary design.

In the example below we see that Duolingo made an excellent work on simplifying
the website by using simple design, colours, and symbols without imagery will make
the users have a great and fun experience using the website through the learning
process.

2- Easy navigation:
having an easy navigation on your website is very important to make sure that visitors
can find what they are looking for, the user should know how to go from point A to
point B without finding any obstacles, this point can be achieved by making a simple
and easy website structure elements like categories bar on top of the page, a
navigation footer, a search box, etc..

in the example below is the navigation footer in the Duolingo website that will help
users find the information they want to acquire better and easier.
 Duolingo also have other types of navigation elements like search boxes, categories
bar and easy navigation screen.

3- Consistency:
Consistency is making the look and feel of the design elements in the website
standardized for all the pages. However, consistency does not mean to have the exact
layout for every page but have the feel of the layout by using the exact design
elements across the whole website which include colour schemes, background, fonts
and typefaces, which will increase the efficiency and usability of the website.

In the Figueres below we see how Duolingo use similar web design element through
the pages to make consistency between the pages of the website by using similar
colours scheme, shapes, sizes, symbols for a better user experience.
4- Accessibility/Availability:
According to a study done by comScore, the smartphone and the tablet internet
consumption grew by more than 70 percent between 2013 and 2015, so in order to
have a fully user experience, the website, must be fully optimised to work on
smartphones, tablets, and other platforms.
Responsive design will optimize the website to work on all platform and will make it
more flexible and user-friendly.

Duolingo platform is optimized to work on both the smartphones/tablet and the pc

through their main website, in addition to that they have a mobile app dedicated to
language learning through the mobile platform.
5- Visual Hierarchy:
Similar to the simplicity principle, the visual hierarchy making sure that the users find
they information they need faster by adding the most important design elements first.
Visual hierarchy works by adjusting the structure, position, colours and size of the
elements so that the attention of the visitors will be drawn to these elements first.

By looking at the landing page of the website we see that the most important
information shown first which is the login to access the courses from the website itself
and a call to action button which will go to a page for downloading the mobile app.
6- Colour scheme and imagery:
A perfect colour combination attracts users while a poor combination can lead to
distraction. This necessitates you to pick a perfect colour palette for your website
which can create a pleasing atmosphere, thus leaving a good impact on visitors.
Enhance users experience by selecting complementary colour palette to give a
balanced-look to your website design. Remember to white space use as it avoids your
website from visual clutter and mess. Also avoid using too many colours. 3 or 4 tones
for the whole websites are ample to give appealing and clear design.

References:

comScore, Inc. (2019). 2016 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus. [online] Available at:
https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2016/2016-US-Cross-
Platform-Future-in-Focus [Accessed 12 Jun. 2019].