Yes, but this is certainly a key to their success. They bring people back even after 2, 3, days, or even a month! Duolingo doesn't care _when_ you come back, as long as you _do_ come back. I was an earlier adopter of duolingo, and it's amazing to see how huge they've become. Overall I think it's an awesome platform; they've done very well with the entire design and clean UI of the site / app.
Also an early adopter. For me, the current UI is the absolute worst part.
I don’t want animated cartoons emoting — often incongruously with the sentences, but even when the emotion suits they are grossly exaggerated — in response to correct answers. I don’t want the “motivational” messages that remain even after disabling motivational messages. I definitely don’t want the “motivational messages” toggle to randomly reactivate, spamming me with far more quantity of annoying messages interrupting my flow. I don’t want the news feed. I don’t want the “lesson complete!” screen, followed by how many skills I’ve restored today, followed by my position on the league table if that changed, and possibly one un-skippable animation of a chest opening for each of the Daily Quest goals I met.
I do want the quizzes to load quickly, and (when on the web) to be openable in background tabs so I can queue up all the specifics I want to revisit in a session — years ago now, I did that with the entire German course, revisiting each lesson once over two days.
But you’re right, they don’t care so long as people keep coming back.
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