Deliverables

Concept Development

Interactive design

Vibe Coding

Prototype Production

The brief

Duolingo dominates spoken-language learning with playful, gamified fluency for millions. But there’s a massive blind spot: nonverbal languages. If accessibility is truly the mission, this gap can’t stay ignored.

Duolingo ASL challenges the platform to expand beyond speech. 1.5B people worldwide experiencing hearing loss and 430M with disabling hearing loss, this isn’t edge-case accessibility—it’s a global, untapped market.

The solution

This project proves how nonverbal languages can live inside Duolingo’s ecosystem—at scale. They have the tech. I bring the pressure.

With Rive, motion design, AI, and ASL linguistics in the pipeline, Duolingo has the foundation for a new accessibility-driven character system. This proof of concept explores how that future could work at scale.

Figuring Out What’s Best for the Project

Challenge:

The toughest part was balancing Duolingo’s brand guidelines with the accessibility needs of ASL. The brand book encourages expressive, exaggerated hand shapes — but for ASL, clarity often comes from simplifying the form, not adding more detail.

Solution

I iterated on the hand designs to respect the brand while optimizing for readability and accessibility, ensuring that each sign is immediately understandable for learners.

Putting the engineering hat on

Problem:

Keyframing every letter in ASL by hand is extremely time-consuming.

Solution:

Used vibe coding to bridge Python with Blender 3D, auto-rigging letters and generating keyframes, saving hours of production time and letting me focus on meaningful problem-solving.

Results

High Social Validation

This Duolingo ASL concept generated a huge response on LinkedIn—thousands of people expressing that they want this to become a real feature.

• 8k+ reactions

• 149 reposts

• 243 comments