Learning Programming: Bewitched by Brilliant Gamification (A Sort of Product Review of Brilliant)

Ah…where to begin. You know, I love a good backstory. This one isn’t that entertaining and it’s long but hold on, let me land, but brace yourselves.

I currently live in the UK, but previously, I worked back home in Nigeria for about 8 years of which circa 6 of those years were spent in highly dynamic, hyper-agile startups. I can probably count the number of times I’ve gone on leave in 8 years — I’m pretty sure it’s much less than 10 times.

However, I’ve noticed that the British do not play with their holidays or weekends — everyone asks you where you’re going or what plans you have and if you have none, you’re probably considered an oddity. I was reluctant for a while but finally decided to join the British way and spread my Leave days over the next 6-ish months.

Anyway, as you probably already know, K-dramas are my new drug, and I’m currently obsessed with everything South Korea-related from the socio-economic issues to Korean ballads and everything in between. So, it’s no surprise that I decided to learn the language. For 8-ish months that I’ve watched their films, I’ve picked up a few words and sentences, but my colleague, Mr S., suggested that I try Duolingo (Shoutout: Hey, Mr. S!).

I signed up in May 2024 but I just took a few lessons and left it until an acquaintance told me he’d joined and also walked me through the features — streaks, leaderboards, badges, XP, and so on. He asked me to follow him on Duolingo, and he went on to show me this other Nigerian lady he was following.

This lady has about 2.9M XP, 1k+ streak days, and so many Top 3 Leaderboard badges. Ooooo weeee! That kickstarted everything. At that moment, the famous Nigerian parent quotes popped into my brain, “Does this woman have 2 heads?”, and “If Lady X can do it, why can’t I?”

I had discovered Leaderboards and heaven forbid that I go below 3rd place even though the top 7 get promoted to the next League weekly. The struggle to maintain 1st place this week has been unreal because this American fella keeps one-upping me every time I advance. How dare he!

As my Leave days have gone by, my Streak days have increased and my determination to achieve first place begins to border on obsessive, I can’t help but think that I have been bewitched by this product, Duolingo. As a Product Manager, all I can think about is one of my favorite Product books, Nir Eyal’s ‘Hooked: How to build habit-forming products.’ Duolingo is habit-forming and that’s on period (Side note: Gen-Z guys, I hope I used that phrase correctly. I’m also one of you, y’know… or is my ‘Millenial-ness’ showing?).

I’ve been aware of gamification, and I’ve known how it works for years now but as much as every other product out there uses some sort of gamification, Duolingo…ah, no other products that I’ve used or that I’m aware of have come close. It employs every game-esque tactic that impacts the users' psyche and it works.

Yeah, yeah… I’m late to the Duolingo uptake, but I’d always felt like I wasn’t good with languages since I could barely speak my native language (Side note: To be fair, I’m good at reading and writing about 4 languages at a basic to intermediate level but speaking is just a mess).

Going forward, I would use the word quite a few times, so for those who don’t know what Gamification means, simply put, it includes game-like elements in non-gaming contexts. For instance, how Duolingo, a language e-learning platform has leaderboards, gems, and XP points as you would see in a game. Even the user interface for levels on Duolingo almost looks like that path you see in games like Candy Crush.

The sound effects when you pass a level or get a gem, the animations, and so on are all a part of gamification. Okay, let’s proceed.

However, I’m not writing this long a** article because of Duolingo. Aniyo!

In preparation for my mid to late 30s career and travel, I came into 2024 with two goals for the next two to five years; learn to code in Python and learn Korean (Side note: This is overflogged but very useful advice — If you don’t have a 5 to 10-year plan, make one. Not everything on your list will pan out but most will if you work towards them. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk).

For almost a month now, Duolingo has helped me get underway to achieving my goal of learning another language, Korean, but I’d initially decided to put Python on the back burner for now.

Confession time: Not many of my family or friends are aware of this unless they are quite observant; since my Fibromyalgia symptoms began, it takes me more time than usual to do basic arithmetic or formulate sentences during a conversation. I also tend to forget things or lose my train of thought during presentations it’s ridiculous at this point (lol. Thanks to my team for letting my minor hiccups and blanking episodes slide). These days, it takes me longer to read books or assimilate new information as well.

That is one of the reasons why going back to School for an MBA or a PhD low-key scares me. It’s also the reason why I have put off learning Python for a few years even when I’ve had the burning interest and the opportunities to do so — I have felt like it’d be difficult to learn it and also juggle doing so with work and daily life stressors.

Hold on, this is not a pity party, I’m going somewhere.

In the last few weeks, I’ve learned Korean quite quickly and I’m more keen about learning because I’ve discovered that I can learn more efficiently and effectively despite fibro brain fog, through gamification. So, a few days ago I decided to Google search Gamified Python courses. Lo and behold, I found Brilliant.org!

Brilliant is a software product that helps you learn math, science, and computer science with interactive lessons. That’s the description that I’ve seen everywhere which pretty much sums up what the product does. It’s a great description, but from looking at the data and thinking about the potential/opportunities that this product has, I find that description a bit…I’m not sure... would I say, Limiting, for the product?

I signed up on Brilliant and during the Onboarding, you’re asked why you want to use the product and if you’re a student, curious, or a professional. So, it applies to both school kids and working professionals. I think this is what piqued my interest.

The wording of the product description and the UI mockups on both the App Store and Play Store almost seem geared toward school kids. The product’s competitors listed on the sites that I visited were products geared toward kids’ education. I don’t have access to their data, but I did some digging and found some metrics on Crunchbase and another site.

Let’s not rush things; let’s talk about the company first then UI/UX, metrics, and then potential. Since this article is running longer than I’d thought and my wrist and fingers have begun to hurt, I’ll summarize most of my thoughts and findings about Brilliant.

Firstly, Brilliant has been in existence since 2012–12 years ago! It began as a different company, but I guess it pivoted along the way. They recently raised Series C, and have about 10+ million users on their platform. I checked both app stores, and they each have over 5 million downloads. The website data shows that the site receives about 2 million site visitors per month, I believe.

In 2022, they acquired Hellosaurus, an e-learning platform for kids that uses games to encourage learning. That’s a very interesting acquisition that almost contradicts the data and reviews but also makes me understand why it seems like the product’s primary target audience is children. It’s wrapped in packaging that also appeals to adults even though the content design on the box seems geared towards kids. Do you get what I mean?

The UI looks great; it’s simple, accessible, and easy to navigate. The user experience (UX) is great as well, except for the sound effect which is somewhat annoying, but it can be turned off in the Account Settings. You also get the gamification feature you’d get on Duolingo here from the the Leagues to XP points and everything in between. Yum!

The course content is in little bits that I can complete each stage in a day. Everything is nice and dandy when it comes to the actual product. One thing I noticed is that you’re sent emails to show your progress in percentages which isn’t shown on your dashboard. I’m not sure why that is because I’d like to see my progress, and I’m unlikely to check email reminders/notifications. That’s a feature that should be within the application. I have no clue how it works on mobile but still…

Now, to the data.

Bear in mind that I’m aware that I don’t know the full picture of things as I do not have access to their metrics, data, or company vision. Despite this, you can see in the image above, that Brilliant’s most visited category is the Programming and Developer section in comparison to the Education category which I’m assuming is the core product, Math courses. This data, their content design, and their recent M&A seem to be contradictory.

There is a reason why Andela became as successful as it did in less than a decade — harnessing talent potential in the African market. Even though Andela’s strategy has changed from training talent to talent sales beyond Africa, the fact remains that the markets in the image above are saturated with tech talent, and there is a huge potential for Brilliant’s expansion into relatively untapped markets with users who are willing to pivot careers into tech or learn to code to adapt to the current wave.

Almost every company now has a technology or digital department as companies strive to remain competitive by becoming tech-enabled.

My mother would tell me that everyone is running an individual race, and it doesn’t matter if some people get ahead before others, but in this case, Brilliant has been in existence for 12 years and has only raised Series C.

Granted, not every startup needs VC money but Brilliant is indeed a brilliant product (hehe!) with huge potential — everything is spot on from the UI/UX to the USP. Everyone around the world needs to be aware of this product, not just the Global West.

This is why I believe that their product and business strategies are lacking and that confusion is reflected in the way the company sells itself. (PS: I mean no disrespect to the people who hold these roles at the company). Brilliant for Maths can be a great product that sells well in the Global West, but I believe that it would be useful for them to run tests to target other markets with a focus on learning to code for kids and adults, the Computer programming features.

Brilliant uses a freemium model. Their pricing is much more expensive than Duolingo by about 59% ( Duolingo charges 59GBP yearly in comparison to Brilliant’s 7GBP/per month which is ~144GBP per year) and that might be fine but just as Netflix, Spotify, and Apple differentiate across regions based on price, if they aren’t doing so already, Brilliant can do the same by reducing prices in developing and emerging economies to attract more users.

With so many free options to learn maths, STEM, and programming, Brilliant needs to compete on price by combining penetration pricing with price differentiation. Add this to top-notch global marketing strategies, and we have ourselves a winning global product that stands the test of time.

Anyway, apologies for the long writing this time but I don’t get to write often these days and my fingers have been itching to put pen to paper. Thank you so much if you got to this part. :)

Feature Image Source: Taggbox