I've heard other reports of people focusing on the game and not their goals. Game designers are aware that humans will "optimize the fun away." In the case of Duo, it seems a group of users will optimize the learning away (regardless of the goals or intention)
Especially the animations, she often remarks how cute they are and wants to show us. It's adorable and I'm super happy for her :) though also disappointed that, when I installed duolingo for her, it wasn't the innocent learning app with good UX that I knew it as from like six years earlier
I'm currently trying to get the best of both worlds by building the app I wish I had while starting learning Chinese. Currently actively looking for partners as well. If anyone that groks language learning is interested in building such a thing do send me an email at [email protected] and lets talk about it.
Maybe it's the course design, maybe the lack of supporting material, or some other weakness in the platform itself. But, I left out of frustration and started building Anki decks so I could have more control. As I'm now on my own, I've had to find supporting materials, which highlighted how poor Duo's explanations can be.
That last part comes down to the course design. Hopefully OP's platform doesn't force designing ineffective courses. This isn't my area of expertise, but I think it's important to recognize that adult learners can have different goals, even within something like learning a language (e.g. speaking, writing, accent, etc.)