One of my favorite podcasts recently had this interview with the Head of Retention at Duolingo. Some things I found interesting:
- #1 money maker for the $14B edtech company
- first time this PM shared this “motherload of learnings of duolingo streaks"
- streak freezes are key to saving your streak, but must be balanced with making the streak meaningful, they give you 2 freezes when you start a streak, and you gotta earn additional streak freezes
- notifications mentioning the streak work really well
- 9 million people have a year+ long duolingo streak, that’s like a big city
- test things on learners with short streaks (not long streaks, careful with best retaining learners)
- half of experiments are shut down
- streak feels like tangible progress to learners, when it’s hard to notice any other progress
- streak is a way to make it easy for users to track how much they have used the app (self analytics?)
- “start a day to extend your streak, but miss a day an it resets” is the current definition
- CURR: current user retention rate: users who are not new or resurrected coming back the next day
- streak graphic::fire: is a metaphor for keeping a flame lit
- the goal for the 1-day streak users is to make sure they understand how the streak works
- practice reminder notifications: 23.5 hours after you practiced the day before
- streak saver notifications: 10pm, your last chance to extend your streak (this is why you see pictures of people at concerts doing their learning)
- perfect streak: your app icon becomes gold if you don’t use your streak freeze for a few days. They have a support feature to restore perfect streak, if your excuse is good enough
- power of animations and haptics in the UX, the more you enjoy the moment, the more likely you are to care about your streak
- some streak features happen if you have a long enough streaks, for example you get a complimentary subscription trial
- every year they ship a lot of streak improvments, there is always more to be done
- loss aversion is the human psychology hack at the core of streaks
- your app being an enjoyable experience is more important than streak mechanics