I intentionally avoided gamification, streaks, subscriptions, and engagement tricks. The goal was calm learning — fewer distractions, more focus.
I’m starting to wonder if this approach is fundamentally at odds with today’s market.
For those who’ve built or used learning tools: – Does “calm” resonate, or is it too niche? – What trade-offs have you seen when avoiding gamification?
Not here to promote — genuinely looking for perspective.
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.
I feel a bit of guilt reading it though. I followed your app from when you first announced it on hn. I liked the idea and still think it's great, I am in theory the target demographic of wanting to learn languages as a couple, and yet it didn't stick.
For what it's worth none of the other language apps stick either.
Maybe it's hard to compete with the heroin-like hyper-optimised attention-drain apps that left all sense of ethic and morals long behind :/
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).
It went from 200 words of long term retention to 3000 words.
Spaced repetition is the most inefficient efficient way to learn the vocabulary. I never have the "see once, learn forever" effect with any kind of deck.
It doesn’t sound like the author of that method believes in science?? I’ll pass.
The problem is duolingo is particularly horrible and is intended to get people addicted, not educate.
Theoretical educational frameworks don't replace the day-to-day struggle of trying to get shit done. (Doing this is, of course, extremely uncomfortable, and people will avoid it at all costs.)
I guess my original comment could’ve been more specific, but I figured the context was implied.
I speak three languages fluently (two prior to moving to said country; English, for example, is not my native tongue), so that's a weird assumption to make. With that said, I still think it's the most efficient way to learn a language, especially given how almost everyone's a nomad (especially in tech) these days.
The point was what's the best way to learn a language other than by having an entire country surrounding you dedicated to that language? Many / most people can't pick up their life for a year to learn a language. People have work, people have families, people have local commitments.
1. Effectively infinite engaging comprehensible input at your level 2. Fantastic way to practice new vocabulary and grammar patterns (AI can provide correction for mistakes) 3. Somewhat fun - if you view chat as a choose your own adventure, the experience becomes more interesting
chatGPT just told me that my pronunciation was perfect over an over. It's transcribing audio into text and has no sense for details needed to improve conversational skills.
As another poster here noted, the effect of error correction is nowhere near the effect of having correct input. (See the “comprehensible input” poster.)
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
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)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6uE-dlunY
Found this episode fairly interesting (without being particularly interested or personally invested in the space)
He talks about how they wanted to let people know that they would stop sending them notifications after five days of inactivity, but that the "passive-aggressive" nature of that notification actually got people to come back. To me it illustrates that it's such a fine line to walk if you want to respect the user but also maybe push through their own lack of motivation.
(I'm not a user of Duolingo so I can't speak to where they land on that but it's clearly controversial)
The funny passive-aggressive communication style is something I personally consider Duolingo's thing. I kinda like it that they have a persona and stick with it in all of their communication.
If it was cold and to the point "you have missed today's lesson", I wouldn't come back.
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.
It's a massive trap because leaning into monetization drastically improves income,
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
So I guess it depends what your goals are with this thing.
* 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.
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!
This is cool, and I've auto-didacted a number of things with resources like this, and I know most here have as well.
But, watching the interview with the Duolingo CEO linked in this thread, he's talking about reaching the far larger set of people that don't have strong intrinsic motivation to learn. Which is arguably a much more difficult and more important mission. The natural learners (and kids of white-collar parents) are already pretty well-equipped by the general state of the internet. This is where I'm finding some appreciation for some of the techniques that might be considered low-brow or deleterious by that cohort.
As far as CEOs go he did seem sincere to me in a half-business half-believer kind of way. The interviewer asks pointedly about his transition from academia to IPO-land.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Basically, our goal is to make the kid's progress tangible and visual for them so that they can start enjoying it, and then use our gamification mechanics to reinforce the child's growing intrinsic motivation so that they enjoy and appreciate the feeling of making progress
Yep. "App XXX would like to send you notifications" -> "Do not allow" :)
It ended up being easier to Vibe code a bespoke one that took the input in a format that was easier to provide.
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/
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
It could mean anything from "immersiveness" to "the devil incarnate"
Things I do more and more often as time goes in Spanish
- Subtitles in Spanish always on whenever possible
- Audio (music (just bought some Bad Bunny), television, sports broadcasts)
- Order in Spanish
- Interfaces in Spanish (computers, televisions, phones)
- Text friends
- Consume news
- Read wikipedia when I need information
- Take notes for work and life
- Play videogames
It really starts compounding, my goal is to stop using the Anki decks entirely in 2026. At that point I should be able to start learning whatever my next goal is in Spanish so that I can continue using my Spanish while working on... cooking or whatever it is I want to focus in on next
If you want to build the app you want to use, go for it.
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.
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.
Do you want to make an app or do you want to float some VC's balance sheet?
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.
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.
- Proper reviews actually feel like they would take me as much time as doing it myself.
- One benefit of doing it all myself is that all the content has a familiar style.
- The downside of contributions is that a lot of the stuff that I see on YT just simply doesn't fit the style that I intend to have on calmcode. So before accepting contributions it also feels like I would have to vet the person who makes the contrib.
A lot of the aforementioned is more complex now as well due to the fact that folks can pay for the platform. It was a 100% free platform before, and right now it's a 99% free platform and some people pay a stipend to keep the site running. If contributions come in, I would also need to figure out a way to keep the incentives aligned, which also complicates things.
I've had a collaborator in the past and a bunch of things worked out there. But he's gone off to do other things, all of which is fair enough.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
---
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.
---
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.
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.