When users of Duolingo, the wildly popular language-learning app, neglect their Russian grammar or Korean vocabulary lessons for too long, Duo the Owl cries. The app’s pudgy, dynamic feathered mascot shows up in a user’s inbox, weeping — hoping to get them to return to the app.
What users don’t see, however, is the work Duolingo put into those tears. Duolingo embraces constant self-reinvention through small improvements, all driven by data. Since its founding, Duolingo has run over 3,000 A/B tests, gauging user response to app features large and small. It might run as many as 200 at any one time. All those experiments produce an avalanche of data that guide the company’s decisions.
And yes — as it rolled out those emails in 2018, Duolingo ran A/B tests to find out just how big Duo’s tears should be in order to get learners to return to their lessons.
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