Greatest design events | Asked me to talk about design work | Said “GREAT…”
Poverty, War, and Death
We can design solutions to the world’s biggest problems | “HOW MANY OF YOU CAN READ?”
780 million people cannot read or write | Extreme poverty
Have not had access to books | Uganda: 1 textbook per 30 students | Astonishingly, situation improving | Look closely at picture…
Past decade, millions in developing countries have come online | 30,000 books
Researchers dropped 20 TABLETS in REMOTE VILLAGE in Ethiopia | Kelbesa Negusse: “I learn things with the computer.”
Not all: UN study | Access to education THROUGH technology already helping millions | OVERWHELMINGLY.. by learning a new language | Majority learning ONE LANGUAGE in particular…
1.5 billion | Get a better job and get out of poverty
Earn between 25 - 100% more | But... there's a problem
Very expensive | $1,000 to learn it fluently | Irony
So what can we do about this? | First time in history, offer access to education, reach billions, no cost…
Part of a team | If we wanted millions of people, it had to be FUN | Feel like a game | Mascot, like Mario for learning | “Do whatever you want... just don’t use green. I hate green.”
Made the owl green to mess with him | Same playful spirit runs through everything we design…
…But despite that playfulness, mission remains very serious
300 million | But... there’s another problem! Started getting emails from people that said:
$5 billion a yeaR | To do this, they have to take a standardized test | $250. Might not sound like much…
Sure you’ve guessed | $250 = more than a month's salary
Testing center | Problem is - developing country = test center in another city | Hundreds of miles | Plane ticket or Train ticket they can’t afford…
1 test center per 2 million people
Became clear - breaking barriers to education not enough | break down the barriers to opportunity….
Then that we realized Duolingo was actually being used by both the richest man in the world…
…and at the same time by school kids in developing countries. The main thing they have in common…
They’re connected connected to the internet. 50% of the world
Even if you don’t have access, friend does | Knew we could use this to do for opportunity what we had done for education…
Launched Duolingo English Test - made it available to everyone online | Eliminating testing center completely
Record the exam from start to finish | Here’s what that looks like…
Also allows us to prove your identity without ever having to meet you in person
Unlike traditional tests = fixed list of questions | Customize for each individual, no two tests exactly the same
Example
More unfortunate
Design a simple way to explain…
Just to make it really clear…
Playful spirit applied to solving a serious problem
This is working | First time in history, people from most remote villages getting access to a college education | Lifting themselves and families out of poverty
Not just people in developing countries | United Nations Refugee ID’s
Brings us to War | Because we’ve been able to reach so many, we now have one of the largest datasets
Researchers created this map | clearly most of the world focused on learning English
Not just in developing countries, even the case here in United States | Miami = English = Immigrants
Noticed something unexpected...
Zoom in here… | So why was this?
Refugees. | 10x increase | Where did these refugees come from?
Now more registered Syrian refugees than entire population of Los Angeles
When crisis PEAKED | Launching English + German courses for Arabic speakers | Redesigning our entire app to work when flipped | 3 million Arabic speakers | We knew the scale of this problem was even bigger | Decided to go further…
… Literally, 6,000 | Invited by the United Nations to visit this place…
Largest refugee camps in the world | Just a small part of it
Population: 37,000 refugees…
...60% children
Most refugee children forced to grow up with no access to education | Lost countries, homes, futures as well
Spent a lot of time focused on educating children | Allows students to study anywhere in their own time | Teachers track their progress, assign homework etc.
300,000 classrooms | More people learning languages on Duolingo in the US than there are in the entire US public school system | Biggest surprise of all…
Refugee camp was actually using this to teach thousands of refugees
Weren’t just teaching them, they were certifying it too
“I love to learn English... so that life would continue”.
Story later became subject of a documentary called Something Like Home
Education doesn’t just improve people’s lives… it saves them
Conversely… Death.
After documentary was released | Approached by Native American Navajo Nation…
...weren’t trying to LEARN a NEW language… trying to SAVE an OLD one
ENDANGERED language goes EXTINCT every 3 months | Last remaining speakers DIE
End of the CENTURY, half of all of the world’s languages will have disappeared | Not just WORDS AND PHRASES that are lost. ENTIRE CULTURES…
EXAMPLE: Native Americans hate to say goodbye | “I will see you again.” | PRESERVE THAT SPIRIT by passing it on…
Make this possible - used same tool that our VOLUNTEERS use to CROWDSOURCE free language education...
INCUBATOR, allows teams of BILINGUAL PEOPLE to BUILD A LANGUAGE COURSE same way you would EDIT A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE
When NAVAJO PEOPLE BEGAN, just 170,000 REMAINING SPEAKERS | Finished, 400,000 NEW PEOPLE learning Navajo as SECOND LANGUAGE
LOST FOR WORDS | CHIEF’S PORTRAIT
Preventing LANGUAGES FROM DYING, prevent ENTIRE CULTURES from DYING with them
Poverty, War, Death | Can’t make DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY | Use DESIGN and TECHNOLOGY to help PEOPLE OVERCOME them
LATELY, talking about DOWNSIDES…
Also consider how we can USE TECHNOLOGY to DESIGN SOLUTIONS to world’s biggest problems | Make DIGITAL EQUALITY a reality | Give EVERYONE A CHANCE | Education for all, Opportunity for all | JUST MAYBE…equality for all.
