Luis von Ahn

Like many of us feel, I don't want to lose my streaks.

So how did the app make language learning fun? In this archive talk, educational equity technologist Luis von Ahn shares how Duolingo's developers harnessed the psychological techniques employed in social media and gaming apps to make the app compete with addictive platforms, and in doing so, how they've been able to spread access to language education across the world.

Stick around after his talk for a brief Q&A between Luis and TED's head of media and curation, Helen Walters.

We'll dive into this talk right after the break.

Thank you.

[applause]

[bright music] That was Luis von Ahn at TED 2023.

This talk was originally posted in October 2023.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like the Duolingo CEO, Louis von Ahn, had this report where he said when they stop being unhinged on TikTok, stock price went down, right? And yeah, obviously this is kind of an ad for memelord.com, go make unhinged stuff your brand.

Yeah, it's all right.

Fucking sh- show the homies.

And of course, the article chronicles his career at Duquesne.

Also, it goes on to talk about Luis Von Ahn, who is the co-founder of Duolingo, which is located in East Liberty.

Also, John Dick, who's the founder and CEO of Civic Science.

And just kind of, you know, the author immerses himself in Bakery Square and what goes on on Penn Avenue over there, how things have changed.

Why does Duo even exist? I mean, most apps don't have a mascot at all, and if they do, it's usually a boring corporate logo.

So Duo was born in 2011, when Duolingo's co-founder Luis Von Ahn was under pressure from his mom to make the app more engaging.

She told him he needed a mascot and they went through a bunch of prototypes, an eagle, a parrot, I think even a jaguar.

But they settled on this green owl and the name came from a contest.