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When I returned to Duolingo recently -- I used to use it heavily but set it aside for 2 years -- I counted 14 gamification popups in a row after my first lesson

When I returned to Duolingo recently -- I used to use it heavily but set it aside for 2 years -- I counted 14 gamification popups in a row after my first lesson in a new language. 14! The damned popups lasted longer than the lesson had! I switched over to Busuu, which has blatantly copied some of Duolingo's mechanics but at least uses them with a modicum of restraint.

joenot443 1y ago
This sort of notification-barrage is a common problem in mobile apps with multiple teams and I really wish it wasn’t. I still use Facebook quite a bit and I’m consistently frustrated by how degenerate the concept of a “notification” has become. Some of the finest engineers I know work at Meta, I know it’s not a technical problem, I think it’s an organizational problem. For example… Team A ships feature X and sets their KPI to some arbitrary measure of engagement. They miss, obviously, but instead of regrouping and hitting the drawing board, A doubles down and pressures Team B to point towards X in feature Y. A sees some marginal level of gain in engagement for X, obviously, so the intervention is deemed a success. 6mos later, Team A is asked to return the favor and add a modal pointing to new feature Z, per the request of Team B. I don’t really know what the solution is except outside of careful org-wide watchdogging to ensure this sort of user-hostile engagement infighting gets nipped in the bud.
- LaundroMat 1y ago
  It makes you wonder whether they use the app themselves...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
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- Terr_ 1y ago
  > This sort of notification-barrage is a common problem in mobile apps with multiple teams That makes me think about how everyone defining an operational alert/warning thinks theirs is very important, leading to so many that users time them all out and everyone loses.
  - redserk 1y ago
    It’s especially frustrating when DoorDash will happily use notifications for both order status/issues and spam various deal/promotion notifications. There’s simply no way to turn them completely off so you only get order status notifications on iOS. I ended up disabling notifications completely (and eventually just deleting it)
    - chipsrafferty 1y ago
      You can get order status via SMS. That way you can disable all notifs
  - rgavuliak 1y ago
    For the team that worked on a feature for month it's the whole world at the time of release. Being mindful that is not the end-users whole world, but just a tiny insignificant fraction is something easily lost in denial.
- bigiain 1y ago
  > Some of the finest engineers I know work at Meta, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher
smcin 1y ago
Yes, the popups/gamification/forced ads/social nags are hugely annoying and eat up the useful time in a (say) 15min learning session . Not excusing them, but you can turn off some but not all of the popups/gamification/forced ads/social nags, as an opt-out. But still an awful antipattern as defaults.

joenot443 1y ago

This sort of notification-barrage is a common problem in mobile apps with multiple teams and I really wish it wasn’t. I still use Facebook quite a bit and I’m consistently frustrated by how degenerate the concept of a “notification” has become. Some of the finest engineers I know work at Meta, I know it’s not a technical problem, I think it’s an organizational problem. For example… Team A ships feature X and sets their KPI to some arbitrary measure of engagement. They miss, obviously, but instead of regrouping and hitting the drawing board, A doubles down and pressures Team B to point towards X in feature Y. A sees some marginal level of gain in engagement for X, obviously, so the intervention is deemed a success. 6mos later, Team A is asked to return the favor and add a modal pointing to new feature Z, per the request of Team B. I don’t really know what the solution is except outside of careful org-wide watchdogging to ensure this sort of user-hostile engagement infighting gets nipped in the bud.

LaundroMat 1y ago
It makes you wonder whether they use the app themselves...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Terr_ 1y ago
> This sort of notification-barrage is a common problem in mobile apps with multiple teams That makes me think about how everyone defining an operational alert/warning thinks theirs is very important, leading to so many that users time them all out and everyone loses.
- redserk 1y ago
  It’s especially frustrating when DoorDash will happily use notifications for both order status/issues and spam various deal/promotion notifications. There’s simply no way to turn them completely off so you only get order status notifications on iOS. I ended up disabling notifications completely (and eventually just deleting it)
  - chipsrafferty 1y ago
    You can get order status via SMS. That way you can disable all notifs
- rgavuliak 1y ago
  For the team that worked on a feature for month it's the whole world at the time of release. Being mindful that is not the end-users whole world, but just a tiny insignificant fraction is something easily lost in denial.
bigiain 1y ago
> Some of the finest engineers I know work at Meta, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher

smcin 1y ago

Yes, the popups/gamification/forced ads/social nags are hugely annoying and eat up the useful time in a (say) 15min learning session . Not excusing them, but you can turn off some but not all of the popups/gamification/forced ads/social nags, as an opt-out. But still an awful antipattern as defaults.