I intentionally avoided gamification, streaks, subscriptions, and engagement tricks. The goal was calm learning — fewer distractions, more focus.
I’m starting to wonder if this approach is fundamentally at odds with today’s market.
For those who’ve built or used learning tools: – Does “calm” resonate, or is it too niche? – What trade-offs have you seen when avoiding gamification?
Not here to promote — genuinely looking for perspective.
Your biggest issue is going to be that language learning for adults is largely an unsolved problem. I know people with 1000+ day streaks on Duolingo who are nonetheless not fluent, and from everything I’ve read, it seems clear that spaced-repetition techniques are not sufficient (and possibly not necessary) to achieve fluency. Most people say you need immersion, which is difficult for an app to provide (research other people who have tried, you probably wouldn’t be the first and can save a lot of time, effort and heartbreak by learning from other people’s failures).
The problem is duolingo is particularly horrible and is intended to get people addicted, not educate.
1. Effectively infinite engaging comprehensible input at your level 2. Fantastic way to practice new vocabulary and grammar patterns (AI can provide correction for mistakes) 3. Somewhat fun - if you view chat as a choose your own adventure, the experience becomes more interesting
I won't say what you are building is a mistake. But just based on what you described, if I were interested in learning a language through your app, I would not just be comparing it to other language learning apps, but I would also be comparing it to language textbooks/workbooks, classes at a community college or MOOC, or language courses on DVD/CD/YouTube/etc. I guess I think that apps are good at gamifying things, if that were to be a goal. If you are stripping that away, what makes your app unique compared to all those other resources? How does your app replace or supplement other things?
And to be clear, I imagine there could be plenty of things that make your app unique! I just would want to know what those things are before diving in.
Poor gamification is a bigger risk than non-gamification done well IMHO. That's where a lot of children's learning apps have failed in the past.
I run a productivity desktop app by myself and have been doing it full time since 2017. The app is a one time payment, free support, no gimmicks, no marketing. Support is becoming time consuming, but profit is high enough that I may hire a few people to help soon.
Good luck! High growth rates with investors is one way to do things, but not the only way.
So yes, I see value in programs like this.
[1] to be fair, my STEM brain enjoys looking at my review statistics and charts. But they are non-intrusive and one has to actively look for them, so it's nowhere near gamification.
However, due to the more user-driven approach to this learning method (output-focused, user has to put in effort to chat with the AI and get feedback), there is more friction with using the tool. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - in fact, more friction can lead to more meaningful experiences. That being said, I believe the market will push tools to be low friction and low effort (i.e. gamified apps) that are focused on consumption rather than tools that require more user effort.
just my 2c from a fellow builder. if curious, check it out here! would love any feedback
https://koucai.chat
I don't mind paying a subscription, if the app provides ongoing updates or new content that I value, or I understand why it has running costs. I would prefer if the app had extension packs, like games' DLCs over a subscription. If an app has a subscription, I will immediately cancel the subscription after subscribing to avoid the recurring cost (if I forget to cancel after year or so). If I find the app valuable, I will re-subscribe as needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6uE-dlunY
Found this episode fairly interesting (without being particularly interested or personally invested in the space)
He talks about how they wanted to let people know that they would stop sending them notifications after five days of inactivity, but that the "passive-aggressive" nature of that notification actually got people to come back. To me it illustrates that it's such a fine line to walk if you want to respect the user but also maybe push through their own lack of motivation.
(I'm not a user of Duolingo so I can't speak to where they land on that but it's clearly controversial)
There's certainly a market for "calm" learning, though you've already identified the main challenge: there's a smaller larger market for people who want to be educated than entertained, and the market for "calm education" is going to be an even smaller subset of that education market.
Essentially you're looking for the people who are saying "I want to be educated, but I'm not looking for the most efficient way to do it. I would prefer to move at a slower pace being driven purely by intrinsic motivation, rather than using extrinsic motivators in order to encourage me to move more quickly"
That market certainly exists, but it's a small enough niche that you'll likely have to be compete at a high price point to be viable. As point of comparison, Mentava costs $500/month, so if I were building a calm learning app (for an even smaller market), I would try to figure out a way justify an even higher price point than Mentava's.
I feel like there was a time when those coding problem websites with points and leaderboards and such struck a good balance between learning and a game. Then they seemingly all got co-opted by the interview prep industry.
There's no evidence that gamification is strengthening performance in any activity, other that creating a cheap dopamine effect.
Please, do it your own way.
I spent 8 years in jr high - college studying German without having any real competency in German, it did however teach me something about learning another language.
Mango isn't gamified. Its basically a curated set of flashcards, and the lessons are essentially flashcards themed together. There are some extra explainers throw in that are helpful. I really enjoyed it.
On top of Mango as the primary lessons, I've been listening to podcasts, watching series in french, reading books, etc.
I didn't pay anything for mango, it was entirely funded by my local library so that was great.
Yep. "App XXX would like to send you notifications" -> "Do not allow" :)
Mid of this year, I accidentally found out about a great independent language learning app [1]. It clicked for me. It was no bullshit, no gamification, and no distraction. I used it for one or two months, 700 hours in total. I can attribute to it some progress in learning my target language.
Then I went on vacation for a few weeks and completely forgot about it. Today I tried to find it again, but since I forgot its name, I couldn't find it easily. Normally, I would search my inbox, but there was not a single mail from it. When I found it, I learned it improved quite a bit and added a way to support the app through subscriptions.
Now, if it had some promotions or gamification built-in, I would be reminded of its existence and would most probably have been using it at least 700 more hours until today, and maybe even subscribed to it. And it would bring me closer to reaching the learning goal in my target language.
TL;DR: Yes, some gamification or nagging is necessary. But don't overdo it.
[1] https://morpheem.org/
I remember my father, a teacher, who told me he viewed his job in the classroom as a performance art. His knowledge was secondary, if that's knowledge you want, just read a book, go to the internet, whatever, you don't need a teacher. But it is not very engaging, and a teacher's job is to make it more engaging.
So without engagement, you probably won't make a good learning app, but you can make the engagement entirely targeted towards learning and not monetization, which would be a very good thing.
If you want to build the app you want to use, go for it.
Things I do more and more often as time goes in Spanish
- Subtitles in Spanish always on whenever possible
- Audio (music (just bought some Bad Bunny), television, sports broadcasts)
- Order in Spanish
- Interfaces in Spanish (computers, televisions, phones)
- Text friends
- Consume news
- Read wikipedia when I need information
- Take notes for work and life
- Play videogames
It really starts compounding, my goal is to stop using the Anki decks entirely in 2026. At that point I should be able to start learning whatever my next goal is in Spanish so that I can continue using my Spanish while working on... cooking or whatever it is I want to focus in on next
In my opinion it’s about your ethical stance and who your target audience is, and whether you’re trying to make a ton of money or just enough to survive. You’re obviously going to fight an uphill battle if you don’t employ any such (predatory?) marketing tactics. However, you could position yourself as explicitly standing against those and that might attract a smaller but loyal user base.
If you’re lucky, and build something good, and people talk about it, you might find that you’ll get users regardless. However, at the end of the day, what matters is whether you can keep the lights on, so you may have to relax some of your stances and rules or find ways to market your product that don’t fall into the categories you’ve described.
Do you want to make an app or do you want to float some VC's balance sheet?
There is a whole movement around enshittification, and I see potential in this kind of app, even though it still seems to be a niche.
Problem is more along the lines of "solo developer" here. Hacker News seems to have a real thing about this niche for whatever reason, but when doing something like this that I think requires real expertise in a wide variety of subjects that aren't software development, I think you need help. There's no way something like Rosetta Stone was developed without the input of experts in language learning and teaching, for instance. Knowing the platforms, programming languages, frameworks, and app store onboarding and delivery processes is already a lot for one person, but expecting to know the target domain on top of that is expecting an awful lot from yourself. I don't think it's a great sign trying to crowdsource business strategy from a free web discussion board, as a single example. This is the kind of conversation you want to have with your private team of people you know for sure have the experience they claim to have, not anonymous comments.
I find either of these more ethical but it is worth noting that any non-expiring, roll-over credit scheme is going to kill you. All you need is one or two months where you’re focussed on infrastructure instead of fresh content and you will find users get out of the habit of using it up, which can end up with you effectively in debt to your users, who will expect more value the longer they wait.
I don't want to project, but outside of video gaming, I'm seeing people in my personal networks pull back from digital more and more - not because these tools and apps aren't useful, but because they are so hostile.
So you might be ahead of your time. That said, businesses cost money to run so you need to assess your churn if you aren't going to have a subscription model.
I like how Anki does it for example.
Also, guide the user to find a non-burnout rate. It is easy to set yourself up for destruction with learning apps and I like how Anki told me "slow down Cowboy" in terms of the new card rate because I hadn't worked out that going too fast on this would result in an avalanche in two weeks in terms of review cards.
I tried learning a language via Duolingo for a while. I treated it as "free flash cards with pronunciation," and tried to ignore the gamification and cutesy animated characters. I ditched it when it went all-in on AI slop. I've since found a free 1990s-style website that has common phrases, conjugation rules, etc. with pronunciation, and have learned much more.
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I think it totally depends on your goals, let's try breaking down why Duolingo is doing what they're doing, and then we'll try to map it onto your own goals.
So, Duolingo monetises via mostly subscriptions, this means that their sales funnel is something like UA channels -> conversion to install -> conversion to subscription -> conversion to renewal.
Leaving out the first two steps (it's marketing I am not competent enough to discuss them), we arrive at "conversion to subscription". The only thing I'll mention regarding user acquisition is that we have to keep in mind, that users from standard marketing channels are always less motivated/interested in a product, that organic users, who are actively seeking the solution for their so called "pains".
In order to convert a user to a subscriber, one has to have an appealing value proposition, which for Duolingo is something like "learn the language in a really fun and engaging way", they support this proposition by including gamification elements, both mechanical (streaks, lives, mini-games) and narrative (cast of characters).
The perceived value for a user also becomes more apparent the more the user interacts with an app (see metrics like time spent, retention rate, stickiness). Thus, the aforementioned gamification mechanics also serve retention purposes (namely, the main thing - the streak) both between sessions and inside a single session.
So the more a user is with Duolingo, the more value she perceives in it ("sunken cost" fallacy also comes into play here), and the more the probability she will subscribe.
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Now, coming back to your question. From your post I see that you're talking about "today's market" so I assume you want to sell it somehow.
You face a choice:
- Go standard UA route, acquiring users via ads, this will potentially get you a lot of traffic, if you have money to spend. Downside: you have to have A LOT of money to spend in order to make positive ROI, as ad traffic is not as motivated, and you'll have hard time making these people convert to paid users without all that fluff Duolingo is doing. Sure "calm tech" is sort of popular thing nowadays, you can play off of that, but still, you have to convince these people to stay with you, learn the value of your thing and eventually pay for it.
– Target a niche in a non-traditional way, via Reddit (though it is not that non-traditional way nowadays), communities etc. Basically direct sales. This way might get you much more focused audience who will gladly be your paying customers. Those people will NOT need bells and whistles. Downside: you really have to nail the solution for them, or they'll get back to their custom Anki decks.