This project focused on:

Designing a character that follows Duolingo’s (language learning app) visual style and guidelines

Adapting the Duolingo aesthetic to create an original quiz layout

It was a passion project where I wanted to explore how Rive could be used for Duolingo style interactions, so I handled every step of the design and animation process.


I started with designing a new character following the Duolingo official guidelines. The idea was to create a character exclusive for the Italian language - an Italian chef who will evaluate the language exercises as well as food related customs. In general the character supposed to behave a bit grumpy but also should be able to appreciate user's successful actions. With the character ready, I built a full bone structure, adding extra bones to the arms for greater flexibility. I also implemented IK controls for the legs, which simplified the animation process. To enhance expressiveness, I created joysticks for 2.5D head movement, as well as controls for the eyes and eyelids. Finally, I developed a state machine with four animations: success, failure, and two idle states.

In the second phase, I adapted the Duolingo style to design a quiz interface. I created and animated three buttons and a progress bar, building each as a reusable component. I also designed a template component containing text areas for questions and answers. This template was used across the main artboard, where I swapped in content for each new question using data binding. Data binding was also used for switching all of the text content between English and Italian language.