Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?

As someone who spent 2+ years building one, I would turn away now if you're looking for traction or sustainability (https://couplingcafe.com). Though I don't regret it and learned enough to speak to my in-laws. My retention numbers are decent, but I just haven't done the marketing bit yet, and am currently taking a break.

Language learning apps are the ultimate sand-pit for solo developers thinking they can offer some random unique feature that Duolingo (or "Anki but better") doesn't offer. Without realizing, they don't do it for a reason. Language learning has extremely low activation and retention. And it's super easy to find one or two early adopters that like your app for some reason to keep going.

And solo developers that get into language learning often are only strong in software development and lack in UX, design, product, or marketing.

You may start with a calm, "not Duolingo gamification" style app, but every language learning app starts with pure intentions until you're many months or years in, your numbers are low, you need to make money, and you need to move the needle.

My two cents, you don't have to heed it obviously.

Not doing subscriptions for an app that has ongoing server costs is going to bite you, you may want to reconsider that.

Your biggest issue is going to be that language learning for adults is largely an unsolved problem. I know people with 1000+ day streaks on Duolingo who are nonetheless not fluent, and from everything I’ve read, it seems clear that spaced-repetition techniques are not sufficient (and possibly not necessary) to achieve fluency. Most people say you need immersion, which is difficult for an app to provide (research other people who have tried, you probably wouldn’t be the first and can save a lot of time, effort and heartbreak by learning from other people’s failures).

I’ve been working on a product for a little while that Ivan Illich would call a “convivial tool,” one that doesn’t take from the user but makes them more effective, independent, and creative from its use. I’ve been interested in these kinds of tools for a long time, but I feel some sense of urgency in the LLM era, where I’ve already seen peers lose their edge by offloading the cognitive work.

I’ve been interested in these kinds of tools for a while, that actually act as a bicycle for the mind. Most apps forgo the metacognitive and emotional labor that actually helps people learn effectively in favor of gamification because 1. Modeling these skills is hard 2. The first step to building effective learning habits is to restore the so-called “learn drive” which is the love of learning, play, and tinkering that underlies most effective learning and gamification does so but on an artificial level.

There is so much content out there, and a sufficiently motivated person will find it and make meaning out of it. Most people are not motivated and don’t know how to motivate, meander, explore without gritting teeth, and I think you’ll probably just see churn without gamification unless you deal with that side of the process.

Since I've tried to ship such tools before and ultimately failed, I’m explicitly not doing the whole SV fail fast and iterate thing here: I’m meandering, taking my time, letting motivation move me when it strikes versus going for the easiest or most obvious thing.

(also sorry if this is itself meandering: I’m lifting while typing this on my phone)

That approach might be at odds with the market, but I don't think it's at odds with learning. I strongly dislike duolingo - it's gamification kept me pre-occupied for a while without noticing that I wasn't making any progress learning the language. When I figured that out, I felt cheated by the app!

A long time ago I used a beta app that was being built by a high school teacher that I really enjoyed. It basically had a bunch on YouTube videos with a few different type of exercises. Unfortunately I had a busy schedule and couldn't keep up and I don't think the app was successful.

My day job is development in the education space. If you care about building a learning app, read up on learning theory / pedagogy. A concept I really like wrt language learning is "comprehensible input". Other things to consider with languages is that hearing native speakers is extremely important.

ps. wrt to gamification - I wish that people took the parts of games that I do like when they gamify an experience - open worlds, exploration, story telling, low stakes, save points, fun!

I think there is room for non-gamified learning apps depending on the field and how it's intended to be used. A good example is the field of early reading instruction. The best two apps right now IMHO are Reading.com and Mentava, and they take radically different approaches. Mentava is pretty gamified and kids can use it on its own, whereas Reading.com is basically a computer implementation of Siegfried Engelmann's instructional approach. Has to be used with a parent accompaniment, and most of the onscreen widgets are just there to facilitate co-teaching. Both apps are good and seem to be landing with their target markets, obviously the simpler one is aiming at a lower price point.

Poor gamification is a bigger risk than non-gamification done well IMHO. That's where a lot of children's learning apps have failed in the past.

Gamify it like Super Mario Brothers is a game. Concepts like "fun" and "progress" are good. Nagging, begging, and creating false urgency are bad. Gamification is fine if it doesn't "take over," which it will when business people are running the show.

I feel like there was a time when those coding problem websites with points and leaderboards and such struck a good balance between learning and a game. Then they seemingly all got co-opted by the interview prep industry.

The Pimsleur apps are not gamified for the most part and the Mandarin teaching is good enough that my in-laws are happy when I speak with them. I don't think I would get any other tool. The gamified apps are not useful to me, and a new calm app is not interesting.

As someone who has paid for language learning applications many times in the past, let me be categorical: I am not interested in what you are selling. I hope that helps inform your product direction.

In my opinion, such as it is, the best "educational" application made in the entire history of computing is Age of Empires.

You can start a conversation with someone, and talk to them about say, the Saracens, and then have them start wondering how they came about their (small) understanding of them. When they realise it was AOE cutscenes, and that the whole project was a backdoor to deliver historical knowledge to people.

I feel like if you eschew gamification, your audience is largely only those with a deep interest of learning.

I used an app to do a security cert a while back, and it would bug me 3 times a day, and challenge me to test my knowledge. I think it really helped keep my focus on the challenge. Likewise, when I was doing my CCNA years ago, the In-30-Days gentleman, would subscribe you to 30 days of motivational emails to read his book and practice the skills. Not an app, but the same sort of thing.

Some people sell the motivation as the core product, some sell the game as the core product (to deliver motivation) and some people sell the knowledge as the core product. All are valid approaches just make sure you are happy with the market you are targeting.

One more thing: I have absolutely no idea how to obtain calm in todays environment. I dont see myself engaging with an app that requires me to be calm ahead of time, but if it somehow strengthened or created a sense of calm that might be a sufficient product differentiator.

Please, de-gamify the universe of digital education, by all means.

There's no evidence that gamification is strengthening performance in any activity, other that creating a cheap dopamine effect.

Please, do it your own way.

Yes, according to Duolingo's (obviously biased) CEO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6uE-dlunY

Found this episode fairly interesting (without being particularly interested or personally invested in the space)

I actively avoid anything that is gamified or uses engagement tricks.

I don't mind paying a subscription, if the app provides ongoing updates or new content that I value, or I understand why it has running costs. I would prefer if the app had extension packs, like games' DLCs over a subscription. If an app has a subscription, I will immediately cancel the subscription after subscribing to avoid the recurring cost (if I forget to cancel after year or so). If I find the app valuable, I will re-subscribe as needed.

I’ve been building a type of an educational app for the last 6 months.

Spent 6 months building the product. Now I’m focusing on marketing and branding.

I’ve spent last few weeks studying other successful educational products.

And so far, from my research, pretty much every single one of these apps/sites prioritized making the user “feel good” about learning rather than actually learning.

And unfortunately, this is what the users want. They want to feel good about learning.

All the successful education sites employ these mechanisms that you’re intending to avoid. I wanted to avoid using these as well - but I just don’t see another way. I’ve even had users explicitly ask me to add milestones, streaks, etc to motivate them.

Reality is - most people who really want to study or learn anything, can do so without an app. Even a book from a library will do. But it requires tremendous consistency, effort and time. Apps are way easier and make the user feel good - there’s still learning being done, don’t get me wrong. But user feeling good about it is what keeps them coming back.

Edit: I’ve also studied many of their ads. Often times on places like TikTok, Instagram, etc their ads are what I would call “intelligence porn”. They get you excited about being more intelligent, investing in yourself, intelligence eliticism, etc. These were a common ad strategy that I have discovered so far.

Some apps literally ran ads with text: “become dangerously intelligent” text and had the song from the show Succession play with images of famous researchers and scientists changing quickly. (Newton, Einstein, etc). Stuff like this cracked me up tbh lol. But apparently it works

As someone who has been recently a customer to multiple language learning apps, I think multiple things are true:

* The market for actually useful, non-gamified learning apps is smaller than, say, Duolingo.

* Yet the market for bullshit apps is too saturated. There are maybe 50 such apps for each major language already in the App Stores.

* As a customer I'd be happy to pay for serious, boring learning apps, and I believe such serious customers exist. (but in much smaller numbers)

* Market for serious, boring language learning apps is underserved. (for German there are apps like Readle, Vocabeo, Vocabuo (yes, lol naming), DerDieDas that cover specific niches, and (afaik) only DW has a quite comprehensive actual learning program)

I believe potential customers like me exist, but our numbers are much less than "learn Spanish in 5 minute games" crowd and our expectations are higher too. Up to you to decide if this is a valuable niche to serve.

I am building a calm, serious English vocabulary learning application for mostly adult, motivated individuals. The opposite experience to Duolingo. No dancing mascots or childish sound effects. I am betting on attracting young professionals, academics, white-collar types that like books, language and the experience of a white page with classic, black typography.

Strangely, through iterative prototyping, the app evolved into something that my testers (and teachers) are calling... a game. I see it as a good thing, and I am adapting this language. The free version is about 'play,' and the paid version is about 'study'.

Reach out if you would like to chat!

I have found it always true that the more fun, engaging, addictive, fast, easy, etc any method of learning anything is, the worse it is. The most effective method of learning something is to buckle down in a silent white room in an abandoned cabin in the woods with no electricity or cell service, and just study the damn thing and be bored.

So I guess it depends what your goals are with this thing.

It is a great approach as long as you don't fall into the trap of trying to make more than a very modest (possibly negligible) amount of money.

It's a massive trap because leaning into monetization drastically improves income,

I used https://learn.mangolanguages.com/ to get to something like ~b1/b2 in French after a year. I did a lesson or two every day, and did all of the review, pretty much much every day.

I spent 8 years in jr high - college studying German without having any real competency in German, it did however teach me something about learning another language.

Mango isn't gamified. Its basically a curated set of flashcards, and the lessons are essentially flashcards themed together. There are some extra explainers throw in that are helpful. I really enjoyed it.

On top of Mango as the primary lessons, I've been listening to podcasts, watching series in french, reading books, etc.

I didn't pay anything for mango, it was entirely funded by my local library so that was great.

Not a mistake. Making an app that fits this niche might be how you differentiate yourself in the market and succeed as a solo developer. It'll let you grow at a slower pace, making it easier to iterate the app over time as you see fit. You could always offer an add-on service in the form of a subscription in the future.

I run a productivity desktop app by myself and have been doing it full time since 2017. The app is a one time payment, free support, no gimmicks, no marketing. Support is becoming time consuming, but profit is high enough that I may hire a few people to help soon.

Good luck! High growth rates with investors is one way to do things, but not the only way.

Gamification actually can help create habits. Seems odd to not leverage that.

I have worked in edtech industry for 10+ years now. Every time the word "gamification" comes up in a conversation (with users, customers, internet posts), it reminds me of the quote from the great Charlie Munger "Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome". Basically, gamification is supposed to incentivize the learner but a majority of training/learnings are unfortunately mostly about "checking a box" especially when it comes to required/regulated trainings (I mostly work with customers in these areas).

So if you are building a learning app where learning is forced on the learner by someone else (their boss, employer, parent etc), then gamification won't be of any real use. No one will care if they just unlocked some imaginary points.

On the other hand, my kids love learning in apps like Duolingo where they are proud of the "streak" they have for continuous number of days. But here is the thing. No one asked them to learn this stuff. They got interested (by watching a friend etc) and now they are playing the same game.

I think I understand a desire for "calm" learning. I'm not especially interested in learning a language right now. However, I do generally have a distaste for "gamified" learning, and, separately, I feel distracted by things I feel are not very fulfilling, but are addicting (namely, scrolling through news, social media, or videos on my phone).

I won't say what you are building is a mistake. But just based on what you described, if I were interested in learning a language through your app, I would not just be comparing it to other language learning apps, but I would also be comparing it to language textbooks/workbooks, classes at a community college or MOOC, or language courses on DVD/CD/YouTube/etc. I guess I think that apps are good at gamifying things, if that were to be a goal. If you are stripping that away, what makes your app unique compared to all those other resources? How does your app replace or supplement other things?

And to be clear, I imagine there could be plenty of things that make your app unique! I just would want to know what those things are before diving in.

Hi - Mentava founder here (we make gamified early literacy software). Obviously I believe in the value of gamification, though I think it's difficult to do correctly.

There's certainly a market for "calm" learning, though you've already identified the main challenge: there's a smaller larger market for people who want to be educated than entertained, and the market for "calm education" is going to be an even smaller subset of that education market.

Essentially you're looking for the people who are saying "I want to be educated, but I'm not looking for the most efficient way to do it. I would prefer to move at a slower pace being driven purely by intrinsic motivation, rather than using extrinsic motivators in order to encourage me to move more quickly"

That market certainly exists, but it's a small enough niche that you'll likely have to be compete at a high price point to be viable. As point of comparison, Mentava costs $500/month, so if I were building a calm learning app (for an even smaller market), I would try to figure out a way justify an even higher price point than Mentava's.

Think of your product as part "content" and part "container". When I say "content" I mean "stuff that could fit on a content platform". When I say "container" I mean, the bundle of forces that your product exerts to bring the user in contact with the content.

Some learning products are just content with zero container. Books are the limit example. Karpathy's "Let's build GPT" is another.

Most learning products -- and all apps -- live or die by the container they create. (There is no reason to build a learning app other than to build a container. If you feel you have the best content, ship it on a content platform and save yourself a very painful distribution slog.

Duolingo is in the container game. Their container is made of every cheap trick in the book -- notifications, streaks, etc -- because they work. My startup was Hack Reactor, the coding bootcamp, and we did it with pair programming and fixed classroom hours. (We had great content, but our competitors with good containers and bad content did leagues better than vice versa.)

If you're building an app, you're in the container game. You can build a great container with no cheap tricks. I have done so! But you can't build a great learning app with no container, and you can't build a great container if you if you don't want to change your users' patterns of engagement and attention.

So, what is your container? How will you weave a powerful spell that meaningfully transforms the attention and engagement of the app's user? What will cause them to pull up your app again and again, when they would have churned from a simple anki deck or whatnot? Given that you find it distasteful to use the easy levers you mentioned (notifications, "streak" psychology), what alternatives can shift your users' patterns of attention and engagement towards the learning task?

If you have great answers to those questions, great! If you don't want to build a container, build content on a platform with easy distribution. If you want to build a container but you don't want to shape your users' attention or engagement, you are confused.

I'm working on a project in a very similar space, and we decided to add gamification. We don't want to harass our users or annoy them into using the app, and therefore our notifications will be easily manageable. But we believe that gamification is very helpful for encouraging users to learn consistently, and so we will include it. But at the same time, we are putting a lot of intention into it not being a distraction (both within the app, and outside it).

Could we say that Anki is a non-gamified app for learning?

I'll give you one example, and you can decide for yourself.

Mid of this year, I accidentally found out about a great independent language learning app [1]. It clicked for me. It was no bullshit, no gamification, and no distraction. I used it for one or two months, 700 hours in total. I can attribute to it some progress in learning my target language.

Then I went on vacation for a few weeks and completely forgot about it. Today I tried to find it again, but since I forgot its name, I couldn't find it easily. Normally, I would search my inbox, but there was not a single mail from it. When I found it, I learned it improved quite a bit and added a way to support the app through subscriptions.

Now, if it had some promotions or gamification built-in, I would be reminded of its existence and would most probably have been using it at least 700 more hours until today, and maybe even subscribed to it. And it would bring me closer to reaching the learning goal in my target language.

TL;DR: Yes, some gamification or nagging is necessary. But don't overdo it.

[1] https://morpheem.org/

I've been using these fundamentals (calm, non-gamified, emphasis on focus & flow) for building a Mandarin language learning via chat with AI. My goal was to give the user a focused tool (i.e. chat with an AI at your level) and let them experiment & play at their own pace.

However, due to the more user-driven approach to this learning method (output-focused, user has to put in effort to chat with the AI and get feedback), there is more friction with using the tool. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - in fact, more friction can lead to more meaningful experiences. That being said, I believe the market will push tools to be low friction and low effort (i.e. gamified apps) that are focused on consumption rather than tools that require more user effort.

just my 2c from a fellow builder. if curious, check it out here! would love any feedback

https://koucai.chat

There's an amazing, gamified app out there that uses standard learning optimization patterns. It's called Duolingo. Unfortunately, you can have a multi-year streak on it and still not speak the language. It is effectively a language-themed quiz game, and not a language-learning game.

What you're doing is fundamentally at odds with the market, but perhaps there are people who want to use an app where they learn language.

Do you want to have hockeystick user growth and a billion dollar IPO in a year? Maybe a bad idea.

Do you want to live off selling the app? Might be hard, not impossible.

Are you building it for fun or to help people? Excellent idea. Sign me up.

Gamification helps with growth and engagement but not necessarily learning. I have a feeling that a "calm" app would grow more slowly but if the experience and results are good, you could have more durable and satisfied customers, less churn, etc.

I think yes. If you don't create an obvious avenue for the user to infer his development, he won't be able to do it. You have to confuse the audience to bring in the sense of progress. People learn by being challenged, confused, and by building something. Nobody learns by interfacing with an application that promises it. But besides learning nothing, they can feel good about being engaged, by completing tasks, seeing progress bar moving, seeing number go up. Someone that decides to interface with a learning app instead of learning the damn thing is doomed, will never learn anything at all. Just give them a sense of accomplishment so they can feel good about it. Without gamification what would the platform give them? If don't help them cope with their inertia, there really is nothing you could do. Maybe you are equating gamification with dark patterns? Gamification is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a powerful psychological trick. Can definitely be used for good. Working on performance often feels amazing because we can profile, identify clear bottlenecks and work to reduce them. When you manage to make number go down, you have a clear indication something went right. Maybe you didn't absolutely improve de code, but you made it better in a very specific way under a very specific lens. People like it because of this aspect, and it does feel a little bit like a game. There is a clear requirement and a clear specification. The game aspect makes it very enjoyable. I suppose development against a test suite provides a similar experience. Feels good in a game-ish way. Gamification is more related to the feels good than dark patterns, but obviously, the whole industry will ONLY be interested in exploiting practices. There is no incentive to make the user feel good, at all, without being pervasive. If you care about your user, you should design around the user. Inevitably, you will think a bunch about what feels good. If all you care about is the user learning, developing competence, you will offer no platform at all. The platform will tell them to close it and go do the thing. If you want to motivate them, another story. If you want them to feel accomplished, another story. You're building a feels good, want to feel accomplished want to fool myself into learning app.s gamification is the whole point.

Language learning apps are an Eternal September tarpit for well-meaning developers. The economics an the pedagogy are fundamentally in tension in this space, and it’s crowded to say the least. Work in it out of love for building, not because you expect to make real income.

It's fine if you focus your app on highly motivated language learners, or people bothered by gamification. The issue is going to be how to market to those people. They need to hear of your product somehow.

Having an app oriented toward being used by anyone has the advantage that you can slap an ad up anywhere, and you'll reach a potential customer.

"Gamification" is not necessarily bad, it's just how you do it. Even mathacademy.com has weekly leagues, and it does make it more motivating and social.

Put the learning stuff at the forefront, and the gamification stuff can be on the side for people who find that fun. The difference is something like mathacademy is trying to actually teach you math, duolingo is trying to hook you to look at ads.

My favourite - by a large margin - language learning app is Anki. This is an open source flashcards app, with minimalistic (one could say primitive) UI and no gamification whatsoever[1].

So yes, I see value in programs like this.

[1] to be fair, my STEM brain enjoys looking at my review statistics and charts. But they are non-intrusive and one has to actively look for them, so it's nowhere near gamification.

I have an allergic reaction to anything that feels manipulative, and "gamification" is probably the most manipulative. I've abandoned every learning app that prods you with points, achievements, and other noise.

Idunno, languagetransfer is a huge success, and is super calm and non-gamified. Or, it's a huge success in that it helps a lot of people learn languages, maybe not so huge success in SV/YC terms =P

I tried building a learning app (iraproject.com) for students and eventually the market just pushed me towards gamification and traditional school methods. I held out for a year but at some point I needed to pay the bills. If you're able to I'd encourage you to stay true to your values but know that it takes a lot of time and patience to make it work.

Math Academy has some of that but remains a calm and distraction-free learning environment that still actually teaches anyone who shows up to regularly and consistently do the work. Worth checking out.

It really depends what you mean by gamification.

It could mean anything from "immersiveness" to "the devil incarnate"

I'd love an app like this. I usually go through my Anki deck in bed before sleep and in the morning and am always on the lookout for other language learning methods. Being in bed, I don't want anything too gamified or exciting during that time. Just some calm/chill practice before I sleep.

For me most forced interactions by modern apps (also the constant nagging about updates and new features) is the main factor why I'm trying to get rid of them. Not really in the market for language learning myself, but the app not being gamified would be a positive selling point, yes.

If your goal is more users, it would make sense to have a calm setting.

If you want to build the app you want to use, go for it.

To me, a learning needs some kind of gamification and engagement tricks. There is nothing calm about learning, you need the dopamine! Among other things, dopamine is the learning hormone, it is a problem when it makes you learn the wrong things, like "fentanyl is really great", or "I need to buy more stuff I don't need", but it is also what helps you learn useful skills and life lessons.

I remember my father, a teacher, who told me he viewed his job in the classroom as a performance art. His knowledge was secondary, if that's knowledge you want, just read a book, go to the internet, whatever, you don't need a teacher. But it is not very engaging, and a teacher's job is to make it more engaging.

So without engagement, you probably won't make a good learning app, but you can make the engagement entirely targeted towards learning and not monetization, which would be a very good thing.

I don't really care if it is calm or not, I care if it teaches me a language. Duolingo doesn't really get you there in terms of language learning. Also, does it teach speaking, listening, reading, writing? Each of these goals is different.

If you want a livable income, no. If it's for a side project, sure.

I'd try it if you share it.

No I think you should continue, frigging done with gamification of everything, I hope to just learn well

No experience in the field, other than 2048, so take this with a grain of salt.

In my opinion it’s about your ethical stance and who your target audience is, and whether you’re trying to make a ton of money or just enough to survive. You’re obviously going to fight an uphill battle if you don’t employ any such (predatory?) marketing tactics. However, you could position yourself as explicitly standing against those and that might attract a smaller but loyal user base.

If you’re lucky, and build something good, and people talk about it, you might find that you’ll get users regardless. However, at the end of the day, what matters is whether you can keep the lights on, so you may have to relax some of your stances and rules or find ways to market your product that don’t fall into the categories you’ve described.

Depends.

Do you want to make an app or do you want to float some VC's balance sheet?

Do you want to help people learn or do you want to make money? Those are very different incentives. I think the gamified apps learn too much towards retention vs learning; because ultimately someone who learns the material isn't a customer anymore, unless they keep using your app for another subject.

Do you personally use your own app?

This is the biggest, easiest predictor of software success. If you're not using your own app every day, there's no reason for other people to as well, save for network effect type apps.

Although it's in a different area, I wanted to mention https://calmcode.io/ as an excellent example of a calm learning platform.

There is a whole movement around enshittification, and I see potential in this kind of app, even though it still seems to be a niche.

There are multiple ways to get to engagement of users for outcomes.

If your goal is keeping them spinning, there's ways that were discovered to do that. If you can get people to their outcome in a similar fashion, that might be sufficient.

Instead of calm, you might just be after focus, as in calm focus.

Is your solution about you, or them?

Are the usage statistics you're after based on vanity metrics, or outcome metrics?

I would find how you solve the user's outcome, and then support that journey with the appropriate tools. Tactics will come and go, and users will become immune to them.

I don't think it's a mistake. Non-subscription without clear gamification and engagement tricks seems like Rosetta Stone basically and that's the longest-running, most effective language learning software I'm aware of. When I joined the Army 18 years ago, while waiting for school assignment, I had the opportunity to train provincial reconstruction teams as a role player and had to cram learn some reasonable level of conversational Pashtun and that was what we used, before smart phones were widely adopted. The only real innovation I've seen since then is conversational LLMs that allow you free-form practice without a human partner, but even back then, scripted conversational practice was pretty good as long as there was a wide enough diversity of scripts.

Problem is more along the lines of "solo developer" here. Hacker News seems to have a real thing about this niche for whatever reason, but when doing something like this that I think requires real expertise in a wide variety of subjects that aren't software development, I think you need help. There's no way something like Rosetta Stone was developed without the input of experts in language learning and teaching, for instance. Knowing the platforms, programming languages, frameworks, and app store onboarding and delivery processes is already a lot for one person, but expecting to know the target domain on top of that is expecting an awful lot from yourself. I don't think it's a great sign trying to crowdsource business strategy from a free web discussion board, as a single example. This is the kind of conversation you want to have with your private team of people you know for sure have the experience they claim to have, not anonymous comments.

If you are avoiding subscriptions, are you doing credit buckets? Up front X months in advance and a reminder to top up?

I find either of these more ethical but it is worth noting that any non-expiring, roll-over credit scheme is going to kill you. All you need is one or two months where you’re focussed on infrastructure instead of fresh content and you will find users get out of the habit of using it up, which can end up with you effectively in debt to your users, who will expect more value the longer they wait.

Books?

> I’m starting to wonder if this approach is fundamentally at odds with today’s market.

I don't want to project, but outside of video gaming, I'm seeing people in my personal networks pull back from digital more and more - not because these tools and apps aren't useful, but because they are so hostile.

So you might be ahead of your time. That said, businesses cost money to run so you need to assess your churn if you aren't going to have a subscription model.

I use anki daily and I like that it doesn't nag me.

I think streaks are a good thing (consistency) if you push the user to look at them in aggregate (ala the Github green checkbox) not in terms of punishment for missing a day (aka a single number).

I like how Anki does it for example.

Also, guide the user to find a non-burnout rate. It is easy to set yourself up for destruction with learning apps and I like how Anki told me "slow down Cowboy" in terms of the new card rate because I hadn't worked out that going too fast on this would result in an avalanche in two weeks in terms of review cards.

TL;DR you have to be like Duolingo only if you plan to monetize like them.

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I think it totally depends on your goals, let's try breaking down why Duolingo is doing what they're doing, and then we'll try to map it onto your own goals.

So, Duolingo monetises via mostly subscriptions, this means that their sales funnel is something like UA channels -> conversion to install -> conversion to subscription -> conversion to renewal.

Leaving out the first two steps (it's marketing I am not competent enough to discuss them), we arrive at "conversion to subscription". The only thing I'll mention regarding user acquisition is that we have to keep in mind, that users from standard marketing channels are always less motivated/interested in a product, that organic users, who are actively seeking the solution for their so called "pains".

In order to convert a user to a subscriber, one has to have an appealing value proposition, which for Duolingo is something like "learn the language in a really fun and engaging way", they support this proposition by including gamification elements, both mechanical (streaks, lives, mini-games) and narrative (cast of characters).

The perceived value for a user also becomes more apparent the more the user interacts with an app (see metrics like time spent, retention rate, stickiness). Thus, the aforementioned gamification mechanics also serve retention purposes (namely, the main thing - the streak) both between sessions and inside a single session.

So the more a user is with Duolingo, the more value she perceives in it ("sunken cost" fallacy also comes into play here), and the more the probability she will subscribe.

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Now, coming back to your question. From your post I see that you're talking about "today's market" so I assume you want to sell it somehow.

You face a choice:

- Go standard UA route, acquiring users via ads, this will potentially get you a lot of traffic, if you have money to spend. Downside: you have to have A LOT of money to spend in order to make positive ROI, as ad traffic is not as motivated, and you'll have hard time making these people convert to paid users without all that fluff Duolingo is doing. Sure "calm tech" is sort of popular thing nowadays, you can play off of that, but still, you have to convince these people to stay with you, learn the value of your thing and eventually pay for it.

– Target a niche in a non-traditional way, via Reddit (though it is not that non-traditional way nowadays), communities etc. Basically direct sales. This way might get you much more focused audience who will gladly be your paying customers. Those people will NOT need bells and whistles. Downside: you really have to nail the solution for them, or they'll get back to their custom Anki decks.

It depends upon what you're trying to accomplish, and for whom. Are you trying to make money from casual language dabblers? Create a useful resource for people whose livelihoods depend upon learning a language? Teach yourself?

I tried learning a language via Duolingo for a while. I treated it as "free flash cards with pronunciation," and tried to ignore the gamification and cutesy animated characters. I ditched it when it went all-in on AI slop. I've since found a free 1990s-style website that has common phrases, conjugation rules, etc. with pronunciation, and have learned much more.