Stay informed with free updates
Simply register at Work and careers myFT Digest – Delivered straight to your inbox.
The owl: symbol of wisdom, knowledge, transformation and good fortune. What better harbinger of the New Year could I hope for, silently arriving in my inbox? Sadly, however, the owl in question is not Athena’s companion, descending low upon my personal battlefield to signal an imminent victory in the ongoing fights, as was said to be the case with the ancient Greeks. No, this creature is a green animated Kermit, overly vocal and emotionally volatile in alarming ways.
I am referring, of course, to Duo. The crazy anthropomorphized personification that haunts users of the language learning app Duolingo, with its huge eyes, its cutesy beak, its plumes of feathers and its mastery of emotional manipulation. As the last person in my family and social circle to sign up, this summer I embarked on Duolingo’s Italian course on my smartphone. Since then, I have felt a flutter and a hooting in my tail.
The emails have subject fields that stray from “We missed you last week!” to “Your Italian skills are getting moldy” (complete with gagging emoji). At the most extreme end there is full-on crying from Duo lamenting being abandoned. Those big eyes sure fill up quickly, but us callous humans shouldn’t expect anything less: “You made Duo sad, but he kept learning without you.”
One tactic used if you take a break is to make yourself feel bad that your rivals are taking the lead, with an indicator of how many words and phrases you might have accumulated. The punishment is mitigated by some hand-holding: “Duo believes in you.” . . “Don’t give up.” The company also employs other animated characters that populate the language lesson settings to entice me to return. How about this missive in passing: “So keep learning Italian. Or not,” said an icy purple-haired woman with sardonically narrowed eyes known as Lily, “an introverted, unenthusiastic, deadpan goth teenager who secretly cares a lot,” according to one fansite.
Clearly the company’s systems have sensed my own frustration in response, because the following messages contain a melting face and take on a new direction: “Am I getting too strong?”
Yes, Duo, you definitely are. When I was a teenager, this type of behavior used to earn me the term “problem trader.” But the team at company headquarters insists on calling him (and yes, he “identifies as male” because I marked it) “our friendly mascot.” With the terrible self-improvement pressure of January upon us, I was wondering if we can understand a little more about motivation from all of this.
When I asked, Duolingo charmingly told me that a deliberately passive-aggressive message has proven to be “one of the most effective at keeping people learning.” They sent me chapters and verses about their “gamification mechanics,” the justification for why they repeatedly unleashed that owl on people. The short answer is that it works for most, or at least enough of us, “significantly increasing retention rates,” according to the company. Everything is A/B tested on student groups, right down to the frequency and tone of Duo notifications, from regret to this side of aggressiveness.
A consultation with friends and colleagues revealed a rather disgusting level of improvement. Many boasted of having unbroken streaks (credit and prestige are accumulated through daily practice), but along with horror stories about losing them. My kids introduced me to an online meme world where Duo comically harasses people. The company itself fake marketing for a non-existent show, “Duolingo on Ice” (with musical numbers like Spanish or Vanish) includes a terrified woman who complains, “They took my son!” as the owls skate away.
You can only employ this type of mocking humor when a strategy works. I suppose most people at least tolerate being so crudely “pushed” toward self-improvement.
Not all of us react well to being harassed. But January is a time to start over, so today I gave in to the feathered man’s endless complaints: I went through another irritating Italian lesson, negotiating once again the purchase of a discounted backpack. If Duo and Lily would accompany me to the Uffizi and talk about Botticelli, we could get along much better. But how would that work in A/B testing? Maybe for the sake of uncomfortable customers like me, they could try it. Good year to tutti!