The App That Could Make You Love Math

This post originally appeared on Medium and republished with permission from the author.

Growing up, I was always a language-oriented kid. Words, stories, and languages came naturally to me, but numbers? Not so much. Math was the subject I hated the most. It was a constant struggle, and despite my best efforts, I never quite managed to find joy in solving equations or tackling geometry problems. Maybe it has something to do with my school math teacher, but let's not talk about that today! As a Product Designer at an ed-tech company, I always keep an eye on other companies in this field, to understand the main tendencies, trends, and changes. I am constantly testing different platforms and apps, and some of them are really good, so I am using them daily. In this article, I'll share my observations of how such apps as Brilliant and Busuu drive users' engagement.

Discovery

My professional passion lies in app engagement, so I was curious to see how different apps build their learning paths, consistently attract students to their platforms and bring inactive users back. This led me to Brilliant, an app that promised to make learning math and science fun and engaging, and to Busuu, which promises to learn a language in 10 min/day. Both of them are micro-learning, which require a bit of time every day.

Habit-forming

Creating and maintaining healthy learning habits is crucial for any student to reach their goals and see progress. Most of the educational platforms right now suggest the user to maintain the daily streak and Brilliant and Busuu are not the exception. They use several strategies to encourage users to maintain consistent attendance of their apps. The visual representation of these ticks definitely helps, where the Zeigarnik effect comes in and the learners want to complete all the circles to give their brain satisfaction of filling in all the streaks. In comparison to Duolingo, they are not guilt-tripping the users for not studying. Instead, they are trying to save their streak as long as possible. Brilliant even told me once "You got the Streak Charge! Take some rest when you need it, you have earned it" — I am in love with this empathetic communication!

Next to that, you are earning the stars, scores, and leagues, which of course, brings the community element.

Learning paths

A clearly defined learning path is essential for guiding users through their educational journey. While users can study consistently, it could become very boring and annoying along the way. Studying could feel like a "never-ending process" and there are no milestones or checkpoints, where the user can stop for a second and see how far they have gone. Brilliant's learning paths are crafted to break down complex topics into small, manageable chunks and Busuu has certain check-points between units.

Recovering from a mistake

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of the learning process, but it can still be pretty frustrating. How an app helps users recover from these mistakes can significantly impact overall satisfaction and, as a result, further engagement. Whenever the user makes a mistake in an exercise on Brilliant, there is a button labeled "Why." After pressing it, they can get an explanation of why the answer was wrong. By contrast, in Busuu, you do not really get an explanation. The exercise reappears until you just memorize the answer.

This approach makes me memorize, not understand.

Some might say that this is because of the nature of subjects, as in math there are more possibilities to explain the answer. However, I think, that Busuu could use an opportunity to remind the user about the grammar rule, instead of forcing them to redo it multiple times.

Goal-setting

Setting goals is an essential aspect of the learning process, helping users stay focused and motivated. Research has revealed that, in comparison to poor learners, good learners set better learning goals, implement more effective learning strategies, monitor and assess their goal progress better, establish a more productive environment for learning, seek assistance more often when needed, expend effort and persist better, adjust strategies better, and set more effective new goals when present ones are completed (Locke & Latham, 2002).

To maintain users' motivation and make their experience more personalized, Busuu has created a goal-setting feature where users can choose their goal, the time they want to dedicate to studying, and the date by which they want to achieve it. It seems like a great idea, but it is not visible at all; it is hidden somewhere deep in the settings page, and I have never been notified about it in an email.

Brilliant doesn't have any goals-related features, although they are asking about the user's motivation during the onboarding. I think it is just to build the learning path and suggest courses, based on user's preferences.

Community and Social Learning

Learning within a community can provide additional support and motivation. Busuu emphasizes social learning through features like peer reviews and the ability to interact with native speakers. Users can submit exercises for peer correction and practice conversation with other learners. This social interaction not only improves learning but also builds a sense of global community. Brilliant, on the other hand, doesn't have any community aspect, with forums and discussion groups where users can collaborate, ask questions, and share insights. This is fine, of course, as learning a language is all about communication and going out there to start talking.

To wrap up

It's clear that each app excels in different areas, and there is a lot to take away from both of them. The interactivity and gamification in Brilliant have made the learning process truly enjoyable for me and not frustrating at all. On the contrary, learning languages was always kind of easy for me, but Busuu managed to annoy me by not helping me recover from my mistakes. Nevertheless, Busuu provides a rich and well-rounded experience, which I personally prefer over Duolingo :)