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Illustrative product design 01/30
Duolingo didn't invent illustrative product design. But Duolingo made it the standard in the education category.
The irony is that now a lot of EdTech apps look like Duolingo. What was specific became the new generic.
What I love: gamified experiences have become much more accepted in education.
What I don't love: instead of opening the door to more experimentation, Duolingo's success gave the industry a very safe formula to copy.
Copying Duolingo is safe - and to be fair, they raised the bar extremely high. I love their style, animations, and user experience. (They exploit guilt a bit too much for my taste, though.)
P.S. I have an animated capybara in Duolingo style on my website - because Lottie animations in this style are the type of work I often do and enjoy.
But I'd also love to work with a founder brave enough to take a different direction entirely.
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I help founders make their products specific and clear — and share great examples here. shtogren.com
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Language Learning App
Duolingo owns green. Babbel owns orange. Every language app after them picks a single accent color and wraps their whole UI around it. This one said no - give every skill its own entire color world.
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#MobileApp #EdTech #UIDesign #ProductDesign #ColorSystem
The color-per-skill choice also solves a return-user problem competitors don't: you can jump straight to "the pink one" from memory, without reading a label or waiting for the app to load your progress.
