Duocon 2024
Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the sixth annual Duocon. This is the conference of all things Duolingo. My name is Luis, and I am the CEO and co-founder of Duolingo. And today, you're going to get to hear about some extremely exciting new features that we're working on. The first one is called Video Call.
It is a feature that you can use to practice real-world conversation by talking to our emo teen character, Lily. She's not very impressed. The second one that we're going to talk about is called Adventures. This is a video-game-like experience inside your lessons. It's extremely fun.
Now, we know you all love your streaks. In fact, over eight million of you have streaks longer than 365, meaning you have been using Duolingo straight for a year or longer. Perhaps even more amazingly, the longest streaks are over 4,000 days long.
That's more than 11 years. That's amazing. Now, today, we're also going to be introducing a new version of a streak that is called a Friend Streak. So, in addition to the standard Duolingo streak, now you're going to be able to keep streaks with your friends so that you can keep each other accountable. Also, you're going to hear updates on our latest courses: Math and Music. Here's a fun fact. All of you combined have done more than 250 million lessons of Math and Music.
You'll get to hear some updates about that. Also, you'll get to hear about how many things work at Duolingo from some of our leaders. You're going to get to hear from Bozena, who's our Head of Learning and Curriculum. You'll also get to hear from Cem, who's our Head of Product, from Ryan, who's our Chief Design Officer, and from Manu, who's our Chief Marketing Officer, about, basically, how we work at Duolingo. And at the end, I'm going to come back for an exclusive interview with Jon Batiste. He's a musical genius, and we're going to talk about musical education.
Anyways, that's the line-up for today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Zan Gilani, and I'm very excited to share all about Video Call. But first, actually, let me start with a story. Okay, so a few years ago, I was at a party, and I met a native Spanish speaker, and I told him, "You know what? I speak a little bit of Spanish."
And this turned out to be a mistake because he immediately asked me "What's your name?" in Spanish Simple enough question, but honestly, I froze. I completely froze. And this was painful, of course, because I had been learning Spanish. I'd been watching YouTube videos. I'd been reading children's books. I was even watching soccer with Spanish subtitles and commentary. I tried, at least. In hindsight, I knew all the words. I just couldn't get them out.
Unfortunately for me, unlike building a vocabulary or acquiring grammar, speaking is a skill, and the only way you can master a skill, of course, is by doing it. You can think of riding a bicycle. It doesn't matter how many TikToks you watch about excellent bicycle technique. Eventually, you just have to get into the saddle.
Okay, so what should I have done instead? Corner a native speaker, of course, and then force them to practice for hours and hours with me. But we, of course, know that that's not easy. First off, where are you going to find these native speakers? They're not very accessible. And honestly, they're kind of intimidating. And I'm not just talking about Parisians. They can be impatient.
They can smirk at your pronunciation, and even the kind ones, you know, you're making mistakes, and their eye is twitching ever so slightly. Okay, so without access, without infinite access to infinitely patient native speakers, what are we supposed to do? Well, we think we have something now, and that is Video Call. So, with Video Call, the way that you practice speaking, of course, is by chatting with Lily. So, the best way that I can do this is actually do some live demos so you can see just what that feels like.
We're going to start with the first one and call Lily. Hey. How's it going? Hey, Lily. It's going well. How's it going? Oh, you know, the usual. I wanted to ask you, got any travel plans coming up? Yes, actually, I'm going to Mexico. I'm going to Mexico City in October. Nice. You seem to love that place.
Any specific reason, or just because? Oh, there is a reason. I'm going for a wedding. The wedding of my friend. A wedding, huh? That sounds interesting. Not really my thing, you know.
Why not? Too many people. Too much noise. I prefer quiet places. You get me? Yes, Lily, that is very on-brand for you, honestly, but I think you might still like Mexico City, actually. What do you think? Maybe I would, but weddings are still not my thing. Well, gotta go. Talk later, okay? Okay. Bye, Lily.
With Video Call, it's very simple for learners. All you have to do is chat with Lily. But under that purple, moody exterior, there's actually learning science, thoughtful design, and cutting-edge technology, which means that you are actually learning with a world-class conversational AI.
Okay, so what do I mean by that? Let's get into it. So, firstly, it feels real, right? Hopefully, you saw in that demo that these are authentic, natural conversations. You get to practice spontaneous, open-ended, real-time chatting. One thing that I really like about this is that we've given Lily memory, which means that as you talk more, she is going to focus on your particular interests and the topics you care about. In my case, I like to talk about travel a lot. That's why we ended up talking about travel.
Let's test Lily's memory. You're back. Do you want to keep talking about Mexico City? Actually, let me change the topic. Let's talk about my recent travels.
Sure. I remember. London visit, right? What did you like most? I liked a lot of things, but do you remember specifically why I was in London? Right, your brother had a baby. Bet that was loud. Newborns, you know.
Actually, he was perfectly lovely, and I think that is slightly offensive, but it doesn't matter. We will talk later. Okay, Lily. Wow, that was quick. Okay. All right, bye.
Those two demos were at about an intermediate level of English. But one cool thing over here is that the difficulty of Video Call automatically adjusts to meet you where you are. So, let's see what it looks like for Video Call when you are a beginner.
And because I was dunking on Parisians earlier, I think it's only fair that we try this in my pretty bad French. Okay. Salut, comment ça va ? Bien, Lily. Comment ça va ? Cool. J'ai une question. Tu aimes ton travail ? Oui ou non ? Oui, j'aime le travail.
Ah, tu aimes le travail. Tu l'aimes beaucoup ou un peu? Beaucoup. -Oui. -C'est cool que tu l'aimes beaucoup. Bon, je dois te laisser maintenant. À bientôt. Okay, Lily. Au revoir. À la prochaine. Salut.
Okay, so as you see this, you might be thinking, "This is all great, but where's the feedback?" "I need to know exactly the mistakes I'm making so that I can correct them in the moment." And the thing is that Video Call actually does give you feedback. It gives you one type of feedback, and we think it's the one that actually matters. What we've learned with our learners is that they really, really hate making mistakes.
Which means that the self-correction part of their brains, myself included, honestly, is so over-active, it's so oppressive, that it actually gets in the way of your learning. With Video Call, we're trying to suppress that self-correction part of the brain and just focus on communication. Lily is going to rephrase, and she is going to simplify if you don't understand, but she's not going to correct your grammar, she's not going to grade your pronunciation, and she's not going to force you to say it back right again and again and again. Instead, she's just going to give you this one type of feedback, which is, can she understand you, and can you understand her? Okay, so let's talk about availability real quick. Right now, Video Call, you can find it on path and Practice Hub, and it's available for Max subscribers on iOS who are learning English, Spanish, and French, but we are working very hard to make sure that as many people can access this soon because we know just how important this is.
I'd like to end by answering one final question, which is, "Why Lily?" Isn't this meant to be this cozy, stress-free experience, and isn't Lily literally the opposite of that? The thing about Video Call is that it's also trying to teach you the skill of conversational resilience. These calls are never going to be as scary as actually talking to native speakers, but they are intentionally designed to be a little bit stressful. So Lily is going to be sarcastic, she is going to be sassy, she is going to interrupt you if you take too long to answer. And as you do that over time, the fear, the anxiety, the hesitation, all of it starts to melt away, and you are going to keep pushing through. So to put my money where my mouth is, again, we are going to do this demo in Spanish. Díme, ¿te gusta vivir en Chinatown? Sí, Lily, me gusta mucho, me gusta vivir en Chinatown mucho. Sí.
¿Mucho? Que exagerado. ¿Qué te gusta más de Chinatown? Me gusta las restaurantes. La comida, definitivamente. Y, sí... Yo creo que las abuelitas en las calles que venden las frutas y las plantas. Sí, me gustan.
Ah, las abuelitas. Aquí no hay muchas. Más tiendas aburridas. ¿Tienes un restaurante favorito? Sí, tengo muchos. Bueno, tengo que irme. Hablamos luego. Sí, hablamos luego, Lily. Nos vemos.
Nos vemos la próxima. Bye. We are thrilled that Video Call is now available and you have a way to get really good at speaking. So, all you have to do is get on the bike, take a few deep breaths, and start pedaling. Thank you. Duolingo is magic. It feels like a game, but you are actually learning. My name is Bozena Pajak.
I'm the VP of Learning and Curriculum, and my job is to create this magic. Learning on Duolingo is like eating broccoli but tasting ice cream. You enjoy it, and you get something valuable out of it. You learn Spanish or Math or Music. That's magic. How does this magic happen? As a tech company, we are all in on AI.
We've always been. Everything we do is to some extent powered by sophisticated AI technologies. But the secret to Duolingo magic is in how we use AI. At Duolingo, AI isn't running loose.
AI is wrangled by human experts. They are among the world's best at what they do, whether that's visual arts or teaching or product design. And they infuse AI with their unique expertise so that we can create magical learning experiences at a scale that has never been possible before. Let's look at some examples. Here's a Duolingo exercise from our Spanish course. It's intuitive, delightful, teaching you just the right amount of new information.
Magical. And one of a billion exercises completed on Duolingo every day. In the rest of this talk, I'll show you four ways in which human experts and AI collaborate at Duolingo to create carefully crafted exercises, like this one, at an unprecedented scale.
One: visuals and audio. Our artists created a delightful cast of characters, including Lucy, a charming lady with a unique voice and personality. But it's AI that let's us use Lucy across millions of exercises.
Humans create the building blocks for each visual, but thanks to AI, Lucy's lips move in a life-like way when she speaks, and we can have her automatically speak any new sentence we add to the course. Two: course content. Our experienced learning designers carefully plan course structure and how to best guide you through the material implicitly so that you can have fun and simply learn by doing, by putting sentences together. Here, you're learning how to introduce yourself in Spanish with, "Hola, soy Lucy, y estoy en Nueva York," which means, "Hi, I'm Lucy, and I'm in New York." But you're also learning an important grammatical concept.
In Spanish, there are two different ways to say "I am." One when you say, "I'm Lucy," and another when you say, "I'm in New York." One is for describing something fairly permanent about you, like your name, and the other is for describing where you're physically located. Just like for the visuals, humans create the building blocks for effectively teaching you each concept. But thanks to AI, we can generate large amounts of content that use those same building blocks. In this case, we generate sentences similar to "I'm Lucy," like "I'm American," or "My mom is a doctor," and sentences similar to "I'm in New York," like "I'm home," or "My family is on vacation in Mexico."
And this creates the variety of content you see in the app. Three: translations. On Duolingo, we tell you what things mean by showing you word translations in your language.
And when you translate a sentence to or from the language you're learning, we need to anticipate all possible correct responses you could make. For example, look here. If an exercise asks you to type in your whole response, there are many different answers that are perfectly correct, because there are different ways to say "hi" or "I am" in Spanish. And this is a very simple sentence. In many cases, the number of possible correct responses is in the thousands, and sometimes even in the tens of thousands.
Doing all of this manually would take a lot of time. So, humans create translation guidelines, but AI is the one generating all those thousands of translations. Four: personalization. It wouldn't be a Duolingo lesson if it wasn't personalized to your specific level. Our human experts understand how learning works, how your memory operates, and what information we can use from how you interact with the app to capture what you know and what you don't know.
With this knowledge, we build sophisticated AI models that choose your exercises based on what you should be practicing at any given time. For example, reviewing concepts you're weaker in, like the word "estoy" here. The end result of our human and AI collaboration: a carefully crafted exercise that's delightful, intuitive, teaching you in a principled and personalized way, and it can be replicated in different variations at a large scale. Magical. And this is just one exercise. We have so many lessons and so many other features where humans and AI collaborate.
Stories, DuoRadio, Adventures, Video Call. They are all full of magic. At Duolingo, we are all in on AI. And when AI is in the hands of the right experts, that can create magic. And it's that magic that keeps you coming back to Duolingo and learning every single day.
Thank you. Duolingo: a gaming app or a learning app? ¿Por qué no los dos? Why not both? We all know that Duolingo is set up a lot like a game. This is why you're doing your lesson before a meeting, on the bus, or even on the dance floor. Gamification is a huge part of what makes it so fun and easy to learn with us. In any Duolingo lesson, you're gaining knowledge, but you're also drawing connections, making progress on your path, encountering fun characters, and competing against other learners.
Now, these game-like elements help you to return day after day. But what if you could go deeper into Duolingo? What if you could become Eddy? Or Zari! Or Lily. I'm Kate Barker, a Senior Learning Designer, and it's my great pleasure to introduce to you a revolutionary, new video-game-like learning experience from Duolingo: Adventures.
Want to prepare your language skills for the real world? Try Duolingo Adventures, a new, immersive way to practice common conversations like ordering at a café... going shopping at a local store... and even dealing with those awkward, unexpected moments. Prepare your language skills for the real world, without all the pressure.
Start learning today with Adventures on Duolingo. For the first time, you can now dive into the world of Duolingo, interacting with our characters in real-life storylines and practicing your communication skills, all while exploring amazing and fun new environments. It's really like nothing you've seen on Duolingo before. Picture this: you're sitting on your couch, and you're doing your French lesson, and then suddenly, you're ordering a croissant at a café in France, without ever having to step on a plane. With Adventures, you get to play as one of our Duolingo World Characters, and you're placed within a familiar scenario, like ordering a cup of coffee, getting everything on your shopping list, or getting some help at the airport. Putting into practice everything you've learned in your language lessons, you interact with the other characters and the environment to achieve your goal.
Now, let's start with some of the language that you'll be looking at. Not only is this the first time that our learners will truly enter the worlds that we've created, but now you can use all that language that you've acquired, and you can use it in real environments and useful contexts, letting you apply that knowledge to the kinds of situations you might really encounter someday. So, for example, you might start an Adventure as Oscar and be given this familiar task: get directions to the movie theater. You likely already know many of the words and phrases needed to accomplish this task, but now, you're putting your knowledge into action in a way that helps you practice those exchanges you might really have with someone someday. Here's a common scenario: you're at the airport, and you need a little help.
With Adventures, you don't have to understand every single word you encounter, because you have the benefit of being able to make connections through context the way you might in the real world. In fact, you'll likely encounter some brand-new words you've never even been exposed to yet. But you'll learn that vocabulary while you're playing, in a natural way. Don't remember the word for eggs in French? Well, now you're in the grocery store, and there they are in front of you, helping you make those connections while you play. When your interactions are entirely in a new language, you're completely immersing yourself in that new language and culture, which not only accelerates your learning but also helps you anticipate the kinds of things you'll hear or what you should say when you're interacting with someone. Notice how Eddy says "rebonjour" after Zari, you, walk up to him.
This is actually the second time that Zari walks up to him. The first time, he says, "Bonjour!" And the second time, he says, "Rebonjour!" As you embody the character, Zari, in a contextualized environment, the clothing store, you'll be able to make that connection that this new word probably means something like "hello, again." Another great thing about Adventures is that it's available to beginners. You don't have to be a super-advanced learner to begin using your language in a contextualized environment.
With Adventures, beginner learners get to use their language from the start, pumping up their language and confidence right away. Let's look closer at how Adventures can level up your communication with others. One big superpower is what we're calling "immersive feedback." In a lot of our lessons, if you get the wrong answer, your feedback will look like the left, with this red banner signaling to you that the answer you didn't get correct was the right one.
Instead, here's how it goes with Adventures, on the right. You're not corrected. Instead, you are redirected, the way you might be in the real world if you say something "wrong" to someone you're buying a ticket from. Our characters aren't going to say you're wrong. Instead, they'll say something like, "Are you sure you meant that?" or, "What are you talking about, Junior?" They'll look confused, scratch their head the way a real person might if you say something kinda random.
This keeps you in the scenario by more closely mimicking how folks respond to us. Because after all, shopkeepers and airport staff are not grading our language, right? They're just trying to understand us. And with this kind of feedback, you'll be able to practice communication better than ever before. You're also playing as one of our Duolingo World Characters, and you'll be learning more about them. As you play, you'll learn about their personalities and the relationships between them. This is all part of the video-game experience, but it's also a key component in how adventures help learners transfer their language knowledge and deepen their understanding of how context and interactions affect everyday usage.
For example, if you're playing in French as Zari, and you're talking to your best friend Lily, you're going to recognize a more informal use of the word "you," "tu." But if you're playing as Zari, and you're interacting with Lucy or maybe someone you don't know at the doctor's office, you're going to recognize a more formal "vous." Adventures is all about interacting with others but also with the world around us.
We really want you to explore the environment, experiment with various objects, and see what there is to discover. You might just get a clue by listening to a loudspeaker announcement or reading a map. Some of these interactions are going to get you closer to your goal, while others are just there for you to have fun and explore and learn more new things along the way. So don't be afraid to tap on things. Tap objects, touch things, open things, find out details that have nothing to do with your main mission.
And don't worry, you're not going to lose a heart if you tap an object, even if you break a vase or let a frog loose in the vet's office. And while all this exploration is going on, we're also telling you a fun story in a fun way that keeps you entertained and engaged. Maybe even with a little twist at the end.
Because the more involved you are in the story, the more present you are in your own learning process, and the more facets of language you're discovering. You know, I've seen this before as an educator in the classroom. Students have these "aha moments" where you can see the light bulb going off. We want to recreate those moments in our app.
Realizing that you can understand a joke in another language can really unlock a new level of confidence and familiarity. Each adventure has the delight factor you've come to love while also helping learners achieve so many different learning objectives. It's the result of a massive collaboration of many, many people from across Duolingo, from engineers to producers, to illustrators and animators, to learning designers, who have leveraged both the latest AI technology and human expertise and creativity to bring you this amazing experience. Some of you have already had the opportunity to explore our world of Adventures in English or French on iOS or Android, and we continue to add even more exciting new stories to different courses and levels.
We're so excited for this feature to keep evolving alongside our learners and our courses. So, tap that object, answer that phone, pet that dog, and immerse yourself in the joy and community of the Duolingo World. Thanks for playing. Tell me if this surprises you: people who commit to working out with a friend are 35% more likely to make it to the gym than those who work out alone. This is a real stat from a recent study in management science. It makes total sense to me that this is true.
I know I'm much more likely to follow through on anything, whether it's a New Year's resolution or a weekend plan, if I'm committed to doing it with my friends. Two years ago, in January, I teamed up with my friend Tyler, who's our Chief Product Designer here at Duolingo, for my New Year's workout resolution. Our goal was to work out together three times a week in the mornings, and we actually achieved our goal. And we succeeded because we were accountable to each other, and we worked out together.
Doing things is much easier when you can team up with a friend, and of course, this is true of Duolingo too. I'm Cem Kansu, Duolingo's Head of Product, and it's my great pleasure to talk to you today about all the new ways we're making Duolingo more motivating by giving you new ways to learn with your friends. Now, if you've added friends on Duolingo, then you've probably noticed their accomplishments in your feed. Maybe you've congratulated them on a long streak, or maybe you've commented on their promotion to the Diamond League. And hopefully, at least, you've embarked on one Friend Quest, which is a way to accomplish a shared goal with your friends on Duolingo.
But today, I want to highlight two new social features. First up, a brand-new way to collaborate with your friends. Introducing the Friend Streak. Now you can share streaks with up to five friends and motivate each other to keep learning every day.
Once you and your friend start a Friend Streak together, you both have to do a lesson every day to keep the streak flame alive. If it's getting late in the day and your friend hasn't done their lesson, you can give them a little nudge so you don't lose your streak together. Just like with your personal streak, the longer your Friend Streak gets, the more invested you are going to be in keeping it.
It's just like having that workout buddy push that keeps you going every day. Well, maybe now you're thinking, "What if I want to meet new people in the app and not just collaborate with the people I already know?" Well, that's what the Leaderboards are for, the more competitive side of Duolingo, where we group you with learners from around the world and challenge you to up your ranking against them. On the leaderboard, you're grouped with people based on your XP and level of activity, so you're competing with people who are literally in your league. But other than that, the selection is random. You're competing against people from anywhere learning anything.
Now, I'm excited to show you a glimpse of the future of the Leaderboard. Soon, you may find yourself on a Leaderboard that is themed. So for example, if you're learning French, you may be placed on a Leaderboard with 30 other French learners, or if you live in Japan, you may soon find yourself with 30 other people in Japan. You may soon find yourself on a Leaderboard with people like you who live in Turkey and are learning Spanish.
The Leaderboard has always been about competition, but it's also about connecting with other learners like you. And with themed Leaderboards, we're bringing that experience closer to home. Now it's time for you to also take advantage of the help that having friends gives you on your learning journey.
Before the end of Duocon, I would like you to identify that one friend or family member who can be your learning buddy on Duolingo and invite them to start a Friend Streak together. And I'm actually going to be doing this, myself, too. I'm going to send a Friend Streak invite to my Mom.
So Mom, here comes your invite. Our Friend Streak starts today. If you remember one thing from today, let it be this: learning something new can be a huge challenge, but it gets much easier and a whole lot more fun when you can team up with a friend. If you remember two things from today, the second one should obviously be to do your Duolingo lesson.
Your friends are counting on you. Thank you. When you try to describe Duo, what words do you use? Early Duolingo fans might call him adorable, helpful, encouraging, or enthusiastic. And they'd usually find Duo in their notifications or in their lessons.
But in the last few years, Duo has been popping up everywhere, from the clubs of Germany to the Barbie premiere pink carpet, and let's say that his attitude has changed a little bit too. Like any good hero, or antihero, Duo is complicated. How did we build him into the wildly popular owl that so many learners love today? By embracing the duality of Duo. I'm Ryan Sims, Duolingo's Chief Design Officer. And I'm Manu Orssaud, Duolingo's Chief Marketing Officer.
Today, Simmy and I are going to take you behind the owl. We'll show you how it started and how it's going in relation to everyone's favorite feathered mascot. But we didn't do it alone. We worked with our talented team across Design and Marketing to invent Duo's wholesome and unhinged personality, both inside and outside the app. We'll also share with you how you, the learners, have helped to shape Duo's story.
You probably know that one of the most important factors to learning is motivation. You can't learn if you don't practice. We want people to build a habit of using Duolingo every day, but we also want them to build a relationship with us. So how do we do both? With a mascot. Fun fact: our founders originally were trying to choose between a little green owl and a friendly robot. Mascots who would guide learners through their lessons and help them stay motivated.
They were about to choose the robot, but they decided to run an A/B test with friends and family. And they found out that actually, people loved the owl. Having Duo has allowed us to build the engaging and delightful learning experience we all know today. Design has always been core to Duolingo. A well-placed illustration or perfectly looped animation can not only bring people back to the app, using it again and again, but it can also reveal something very special about our brand.
And we continue to build that brand love by delighting and sometimes even surprising learners. And while our Design department was crafting this wholesome, supportive coach within the app, the Internet was actually busy giving Duo, you know, let's say a more intense personality. Duo became a mascot of motivation. What started as a harmless practice reminder morphed into something completely different once the Internet got hold of it.
Duo went from encouraging to a little threatening. And this is one of the best things about marketing at Duolingo. So much of the Duolingo lore comes from listening to you, our audience, and doubling down on what makes you laugh. That seed was even behind our very first April Fool's prank, the Duolingo Push. The Duolingo Push brought Duo into an entirely new dimension.
The reaction to the giant green owl was incredible. And it inspired also a makeover of his original mascot suit. Now that Duo had entered the real world, there was no stopping for him. We staged a fake dating reality TV show, we put Duo on the Iron Throne, we took over Times Square, and we even imagined the world's first multilingual musical, "Duolingo On Ice." It may seem that Duo is everywhere, and that's intentional. Seeing the big green owl is the best reminder for you to do your lesson.
Once we started leaning into Duo's sillier personality, we were able to push our brand expression even further. The idea was, the number one thing that Duo wants most is for you to do your lesson. And of course for Dua Lipa also to call him back, obviously.
But since that's his number-one motivation, he'll do anything to make it happen. For a long time, we kept these two brand expressions of Duo separate. The in-app Duo was wholesome, pretty innocent, especially compared to his social-media counterpart.
But as we started to bring the full personality of Duo into the app, it's been transformational for our learners. If you tuned in to Duocon last year, you might have seen animated Duo putting on the mascot suit made popular by our TikToks. This was actually the first time that we crossed the streams between the animated world of Duolingo and the real world.
After Duocon, we found our next opportunity to bring the full spectrum of Duo's personality into the app via our streak widget. Like Manu said, the number-one thing Duo wants most in the entire world is for you to do your lesson today. Knowing that, we figured Duo might get pretty desperate if we gave him real estate on your home screen. So, in the widget, Duo starts out pretty chill, but as the day goes on, he starts to get more anxious and more unhinged, and as it gets closer to midnight, he becomes absolutely desperate for you to extend your streak. So, you do your lesson, and Duo goes back to being his wholesome, happy self.
I love the widget, Simmy, and actually, one of my favorite illustrations was behind one of our biggest brand moments this year. When we saw this illustration go viral on social media, we knew we had to do something more with it, and our talented teams across Design and Marketing worked together to create a five-second spot that no one will ever forget. It's so cool.
Sorry, Mom. We're continuing to play with Duo's rascally personality. Maybe you thought your phone was broken when you saw Duo's melting face on your app icon. Or maybe you got a push notification that made you laugh out loud.
As we combine the power of Design and Marketing, we've proven that we're able to take an already iconic brand and turn it into something even more relatable and engaging for learners. This mentality has made us think carefully about what to do with the other characters in the Duolingo World and how we might bring their full personalities into your lessons. That's why I'm so excited by features like Video Call and Adventures, which you saw earlier today. And we're always looking through our social feeds for what Duo might do next. Your reactions inspire us. After all, without you, we would never have thought about cooking Duo.
We can't wait to share with you all the great things we have for this fall. One particular product I'm very excited about is Year in Review. Year in Review is a personalized recap of how you've been learning on Duolingo.
But please, don't forget, you only have a few weeks left to impact your results. There's still time, Manu. You can still do your language, Math, or Music lessons, and hopefully, hopefully, you'll stay safe from Duo at the end of the year. Well, no promises there. -Thanks. -Thank you, everybody.
How many times have you used math today without even realizing it? Perhaps it was calculating your commute to work, comparing two prices at a grocery store, or splitting a bill with friends. Each of these everyday activities requires us to think mathematically and goes to show that math isn't just a subject we study in school, it's a force that shapes our daily lives and decisions. Research even shows that math literacy in childhood is one of the biggest predictors of adult success. Yet for a lot of us, math can still remain a source of anxiety or boredom. That's why math is such an important subject for us here at Duolingo. We believe that everyone is not just capable of learning math but of truly enjoying it, and if anyone can help you unlock your math potential, it's us.
I'm Emily Li, a Senior Product Manager on Duolingo Math, and today, I'm really excited to be sharing with you all the ways that we're leveling up our Math course to help you enhance your everyday problem-solving math skills. Let's start with word problems. Do you remember those in school? If a train leaves the station at 10:00 a.m. going 65 mph, or if I have two dozen oranges, and I take away 16... These problems can sometimes feel disconnected from our lives and lead to frustration or boredom. But what if instead of calculating abstract scenarios, you're helping a friend solve a real-life problem? That's the heart of our reimagined word problems here at Duolingo.
We've brought our beloved Duolingo characters as well as interactive real-world visuals into the mix, turning each problem into what feels more like a mini story. Let's take a look at a few examples. We've incorporated a variety of real-world interactive objects, like dollar bills to help you figure out money problems, measuring cups to help you calculate liquid volume, rulers to help you understand length, and so much more.
Now you're not just thinking about theoretical trains or random pieces of fruit. You're helping Zari measure a banner for her Calculus Club or helping Junior figure out how much water his pet frog Sugar needs. By infusing relatability and interactivity into our problems, we're showing you that math isn't just about numbers.
It's about navigating everyday challenges. But life rarely presents you with neat, single-step problems. That's why we're also introducing Life Skills: multi-step scenarios that are meant to mirror more complex real-world situations. In Life Skills, we break the situation down for you step by step, guiding you on the path to the answer. Let's say Oscar is traveling from New York City to Rome for a museum opening. My plane departs from New York at 5:00 p.m.
and lands in Rome at 7:00 a.m. Rome is six hours ahead of New York. Oscar wants to know how long his flight is going to be. That's not the easiest calculation to do in your head, right? But if you first figure out what time it is in Rome when the plane takes off...
Then you can easily calculate how long Oscar will be in the air for. My journey will be eight hours long. Until next time. Ciao! Whether it's planning a trip to Rome or comparing store discounts, these exercises break down intimidating problems into manageable steps.
We're not just teaching you math here. We're building your confidence to tackle life's everyday challenges. But for those moments where you want to flex your math muscles just for the fun of it, we've also got you covered there. We're introducing four new math games into our course. Cash Dash, where we challenge you to make quick money decisions. Magic Squares, where you have to use deduction to make every row and column add up to the same number.
Secret Equation, where you get five chances to guess the elements of a math equation. And Math Paths, where you're challenged to find paths on a board that add up to a target number. These games exercise your mental math and logic skills and prove that math can be as fun as it is practical. And as we expand our curriculum to include new topics like probability, statistics, and algebra, we're not just adding new lessons. We're opening doors to new ways of approaching problems in your daily life.
But perhaps the most exciting news of all, and the one that many of you have been waiting for: Duolingo Math is now launching on Android, starting with users in six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. We're bringing our vision of accessible, fun math education to millions more of you across the world. With Duolingo Math, our goal isn't just to teach you numbers, it's to empower you to solve the everyday challenges in your life. Picture yourself being able to confidently negotiate a raise because you understand percentages, making an informed decision about investment, or helping your child with their math homework with a shared sense of discovery rather than anxiety.
Our goal is to turn numbers into tools for understanding rather than obstacles to overcome. That's why we're so thrilled to take Duolingo Math to the next level, and we want you to be a part of this journey with us. So, why not start today? You can open the Duolingo app now, add the Math course, and immerse yourself in our character-driven real-world problems as well as fun, new math games. Together, we can change the way you see math in your everyday life and unlock your problem-solving potential. Thank you. Recently, one of my friends told me that he's always wanted to play the piano.
But he said he never got the chance to take lessons as a kid, so even if he started now, it would be too late. He'd never be good enough. So I asked him, "Would you have to play like LeBron before enjoying basketball?" We introduced the Music course last year to help people get past that kind of barrier to entry and just start learning. I'm Jenny Cha, a Designer at Duolingo, and I'll be sharing five updates coming to our Music course. Like my friend, so many people want to learn music, but they never start.
They think it'll be too hard, that lessons are too costly, or, like me as a kid in my own music class and had to memorize the scales before I could play the songs, think they'll have to wait a long time before they can play anything that's actually fun. But you've told us how proud you were to play "Happy Birthday" at your kid's party or when you performed "Canon in D" as your best friend walked down the aisle. Learning highly recognizable songs like these is key to how we teach to play. And now, for a fun twist to these familiar songs, we are reimagining them in ways inspired by our own Duolingo World Characters and their personalities. Just listen to what happened when Lily got her hands on one of them. But many of you have also asked when you'll be able to play more songs that you love.
Maybe songs that are a bit more modern. And so I'm excited to share the second feature for today, which some of you already had a chance to experience yourselves. Songs in our course are no longer limited to ones like "Jingle Bells." You can now learn your favorite pop songs by today's biggest artists, like Meghan Trainor, Pharrell, Sia, Pink, and others. We've partnered with Sony Music to bring songs from their catalog to our lessons and align them to each unit of our course to make sure it teaches and reinforces the right skills. With this partnership, you'll play along to real album tracks, not recreated versions like something you might hear at karaoke, and we'll keep adding more songs by artists that you know and love.
In addition, many of our learners have told us that they're eager to put their real skills to practice on real, physical instruments. And so we've developed a feature that will allow you to do just that. The app will listen to you play and provide real-time feedback, just as it would when you are using the keyboard on your phone screen. Now, whether you only have a few minutes before work or all Saturday morning to sit down in front of a piano for dedicated practice, you'll be able to learn the way you want. We've also been developing a more comprehensive Music curriculum, so brand-new content is coming soon.
We will teach more complex rhythms, how to read notes in the bass clef, add more ear-training exercises to expand your listening skills, and more. And finally, I'm very happy to announce that Music is now available on Android, starting with our learners in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Vietnamese, and our teams will work hard to expand Music to even more languages. We all listen to music and find joy in it. It truly is a universal language. But to be able to speak this language by playing music yourself is like finally tasting a cake that until now you've only been able to smell.
I hope you continue to discover how empowering it is to read and play music with these new additions to our course. So, next time when you're sitting in your car, nodding your head to your favorite song, maybe stop and think, "I could do this for real." That's it from me and Music. Thank you so much. Woo, beautiful. Yeah, you heard it? Oh, Luis! -I think I recognize that song. -The chords. -It's "Spanish or Vanish".
-Yes, I love the modulation at the end to the D major. -Be honest. How long did it take you to learn that? -Honestly, it was about less than a minute. The song is less than a minute, though, so just listen to it.
-Okay, but still, it took you less than a minute to learn that? -Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful melody. Who wrote this? Is it... I love the way that the melody is so symmetrical. It goes... And then...
Then the modulation. Soulful. -That's amazing. -Beautiful stuff. -I mean, it would take me...
Well, I can't play the piano, but it would take me years to learn that. -I was going to say, do you play? And the rhythm too. -I don't. -You could go into a space. Okay. Tell me.
What's your approach if somebody tells you to learn something new like this? -Yeah, yeah, yeah. -What's your approach to doing it? -I like to throw myself into the deep end just to figure out what does this feel like at my current competency? What does it feel like to try? And then let's go back to square one. -Okay. So you just kind of try it at first? -Yeah. -Okay.
Immediately throwing yourself in, you realize where you are, the truth is inevitable. You just are aware and you see, okay, this is how much work I have to do. Is it less than a minute of work, or is it decades of work? For instance, when I was 11, the blues scale was the thing that I knew.
The blues scales, it was a feeling, and then it became a thing. So... My early mentors, they taught us the blues scale as the first kind of scale that we would improvise using, the pentatonic scale and the blues scale, because it's so ubiquitous and it also is the root of jazz music. So if you're thinking about jazz, you have to know the blues.
So when I was 11, I would just be doing stuff like this. Finding little blue notes. And I still love doing that. But then as I got older, more into jazz, more into classical music, I would maybe change the progressions and find the blues in more sophisticated sound and progressions.
-You see? -Yeah. So I'm doing the same thing, -just adding different, -It just sounds much more sophisticated. My sense, especially with music, I just started trying to learn music.
I'm still at the point where I'm frustrated because I can't do the simplest things, and I'm frustrated with myself. But I do see that over time, you kind of just get a little better. Yeah, even if it's like five minutes a day. Five minutes a day over the course of years is a lot of focus time. And then you'll want to do more when you find that excitement and that passion and it catches you, you're going to go, "Oh my goodness, I've been here for three, four hours.
I didn't even realize it." Do you think everybody should try to learn at an early age, music? I think everybody should be musical, because I think music is just a joy. So much that we connect to with music. It's the universal language for a reason.
It catches people. So if you have a connection to music, it'll only make your life even better. Now, do you think, in your case, do you think you were born with some, like a really great ear or something? You know, I think... Yes and no.
I think, yes, there's talent levels. Everybody has a certain level of talent. But I think it's more about work and consistency when you get down to it. So I think everybody has something.
It's about what are you going to do to sculpt it into the absolute highest potential of it and manifest that in the world? And then if you can do that, that's greatness. The great Kidd Jordan, he said... He's an avant-garde saxophone player, very serious musician. And he taught us when we were kids, when I was 10, 11 years old, he was my jazz teacher, one of them. And he'd say, "Talent is like a battery. It always runs out." -Wow. -So we knew from early on, okay...
You got a little bit of talent, but mainly, it's work. -You got some talent. Mainly... -It's work. -It's work. -Just work a lot. Yeah. Work on it. Okay, yeah, but at first, you started playing. When did you start writing? I wrote by chance.
You know, I would listen to video game soundtracks. -Okay. -You know, like... Yeah. But I like Sonic the Hedgehog. You know that one? Green Hill Zone, all of those ones from like Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, -Yep, yep, yep. -And the PlayStation.
The era of Final Fantasy VII. Oh man, those scores are great. So I would listen to that, and I would play those scores. And then I would also listen to stuff like... In my lessons, I would be learning Beethoven. I would be learning, you know, like Beethoven's music or any kind of classical great.
And I would do things where I would sit at the piano, and I would play these themes as if I was composing them. So then I would change notes, and I would do, "Oh, I hear another chord." I would change the harmony, or I would shift the rhythms, and then I would go back to the score or back to the thing that it originally was written as, or... So rather than writing from scratch, it was more modifying at first.
Yeah, yeah, it was like I was in conversation with the composer. So in those early teen years, that's when I really started writing. You know, I'd take something, I'm like... Beethoven in the Congo. Like, what would happen? You know, he's just playing it.
And then... But now when you write a new song, has the process changed, or it's still kind of similar? You would just imagine something like, you know, Beethoven in the Congo or something? You just imagine something and it comes? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I do... Sometimes I'll just sit and play, you know.
Like that, that's a passage. And I was like... Now what if you did that backwards? Now what if you did that backwards in the style of Duke Ellington? And then that becomes, "Oh, wow!" You see that opened up something. So I'm experimenting. And it's tone painting. And anytime you experiment, it's like a visual artist on the canvas. You see colors come together. You know sometimes how they're going to work.
Other times you might want to try something that you've never tried before, and then it leads you to, "Oh, this is a discovery. Let me go down this avenue now." And I'll continue to build this vision.
And I'm discovering it as it's happening. So that's my favorite way of making music. I don't like to necessarily know or have this set idea, like Beethoven in the Congo. That's just something I discover. And then when I discover it, it's like, "Oh, Beethoven in the Congo is amazing." And then I start to really build it out.
I'm in awe because I don't know how to play music. And for me, this just seems insane. What's your advice for somebody like me, like a new learner? If I were to, you know, decide today, I want to get good at piano...
You want to play the piano. Consistency. -Just do it every day? -Consistency for the win! If you do focused practice consistently, it's like one of those things that happens where your mind, the synapses start firing in a different way. You start making more connections, it becomes exponential.
You get better, you get better. Then eventually you realize your thing. Like what is it that draws you to the instrument? What is it that you want to play? And you start to get excited. Then when you get excited, you start to play better. We're motivation machines. We run on passion.
Human beings, you know, we're here for this short while, and then we have so much stuff that we want to do, but the things that really grab us, you know, that's the thing that's going to pull you the furthest, especially with music. If you find that thing that you want to play, you do it every day, you'll find a year, two years from now, you'll be playing. You'll be playing something! I don't know if you're going to be on stage at Carnegie Hall. It seems doubtful. But you'll be playing. I've been following you ever since I watched the Netflix documentary, and it's been an honor.
I'm glad that we're here, and I'm glad for your work, democratizing everything that you're doing for the people. It's important learning. It's important to grow. It's important how we engage with the world around us. So anytime, let's do it again.
Yeah, I'm hoping we'll be able to teach music to some people, and then 20 years later, the next you will have started this way. -That's what I'm hoping. -Trust me. I believe it. I believe it. -I'm hoping. -Yes, sir.
Yeah, well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming. We are in there. Let's do it. Well, that was amazing, and that is a wrap for Duocon 2024. Don't forget to do your Duolingo.
2024-09-26 19:34
