Thirteen percent fluent
“In an old house in Paris / That was covered in vines / Lived twelve little girls / In two straight lines.”
If you’ve been around me for the past week, you have likely suffered through my initial attempts at learning — and butchering — French. (For that, I apologize, but only because “Désolé” rolls off the tongue so nicely.)
I’m learning French through Duolingo.
Duolingo is a fascinating app. I find myself habitually engaged in the lessons, less to actually learn the language and more to learn the innards of how the developers think you should learn the language.
There are some interesting things, purely from a UX standpoint: by completing the first lesson (which takes all of five minutes) you immediately jump to, like, “10% fluent”, which is likely because A/B testing revealed that folks get discouraged when their phone tells them they are 1% fluent in something.
There’s this weird decay function, though — over time, that score goes down, maybe a percentage point every day or two. This makes sense, obviously: skills that are not practiced get rusty, and fluency wanes.
Still, you run into this distinctly Sisyphian engagement approach:
- You get a push notification to complete a daily lesson. (There are gems involved. Why do all apps have gems now?)
- You complete the daily lesson, learning exciting words like “bonbon” and, more pragmatically, “bière”.
- You get a little congratulations prompt at the end of the lesson, bumping you up to, say, 13% fluent.
- Time passes. You live your life.
- You get a push notification to complete a new lesson, which you dutifully do.
- You get a little congratulations prompt at the end of the lesson, bumping you up to, say, 13% fluent. Again.
If this sounds cynical — or critical — I mean, it is, but it clearly works. I’ve learned French for eight days straight, which is seven days longer than I expected to. If this is because of the admittedly gross gamification tactics — fusing French 101 with hearts and gems and cartoon bears and false vistas — then, I don’t know, maybe that’s okay? Psychology is weird!
I’m not 13% fluent in French, which is fine. I will probably never be: as long as I have enough French to read menus and signage, I think it’ll be time well spent.
Technically speaking
- Things with Buttondown are finally slowing down: I am no longer drowning in email, and I am only merely wading through the currents of backlog items. With this newfound time, I wrote a little about what I could have done better with the launch.
- I wrote about a product page so good that it makes me angry.
Three things I really liked this week
- I found a blog with really great posters! Norman Wilkinson’s travel posters and Marcello Dudovich’s work are probably my favorites.
- A Twitter account devoted to really strange Mario trivia.
- It is not new, but someone reminded me of just how perfect Those Winter Sundays is.
Happy Sunday
J’espère que tu t’amuses bien.