Duolingo's Product Management: Innovation and Experimentation Insights

Product managers at Duolingo thrive on innovation, experimentation, and impactful collaboration to enhance user experience.

### The Dynamic Role of Product Managers at Duolingo
* 🎶 After eight years at Duolingo, the mission of **changing lives through language learning** continues to inspire my work as a product manager.
* 📦 In this role, I oversee the **entire product lifecycle**, focusing on **creating impactful new features** and **enhancing existing ones** from start to finish.
* 🤝 Collaboration with design is key, as product managers **partner closely with designers** to innovate and take risks in feature development.
* 🧪 The experimental AI team exemplifies our **innovative spirit**, leading to the creation of a **conversational AI experience** after a year of exploration and testing.
* 📊 Every change in the app undergoes A/B testing, allowing us to **analyze metrics and validate our hypotheses about user behavior efficiently**.
* 🔍 At any given time, we have around 300 A/B tests running, and we celebrate failures as **opportunities for innovation** that fundamentally **enhance user experience**.
* 👥 Our product review process involves presenting changes to senior leadership, including CEO Luis, whose **enthusiastic feedback often accelerates the implementation of new ideas**.
* 🏆 My ambition at Duolingo is to **cultivate the best product management team**, driven by a **passion for excellence in our craft**.

[Music] I've been at Duolingo for 8 years now. What keeps me here is our mission, the fact that we get to work on a product that changes people's lives for the better. Being a product manager at Duolingo is you really own the entire life cycle of the product, and you own it, and a large chunk of it, so you just spend a lot of time thinking through what are the new big features that we should be creating, or what are the massive ways in which we can update these features from very beginning to the end to have a big impact. Product managers at Duolingo are really involved in the idea process and are very much partners with design. They know the art; I know what's good for product. It kind of feels like you're running your own kind of miniature startup within the company. There's room to have that big idea and run with it. We really try to be very risk-taking when it comes to the features that we develop. A lot of things

we are innovative and experimental. We had this team called the experimental AI team, and our goal was just to figure out a new application of this technology that's actually useful. So, we tried a bunch of different things. I would say it was honestly a year of exploration that led us eventually to something that was a conversational AI experience. There's something special about putting a character on the whole screen and getting them to look at you and have a conversation. Everything that we change in the app, we run it first as an AB test, and we look a lot at the metrics to make sure that the change is actually impacting the app and our users in the way that we expected. We have a very great experiment dashboard. You have some kind of hypothesis or intuition about, Okay, I wonder if English learners are actually doing more calls, and I wonder if they have longer conversations 'cause they're more likely to have proficiency in English. You can just go into the metrics and find that out yourself, and

validate that question you have very quickly. We take pride, I would say, in the amount of experimentation we do at Duolingo. At any point in time, Duolingo will have roughly 300 A/B tests running on its product. Half the things won't work out, and that's the expectation. We actually celebrate that because now that means we've tried something that is innovative, that's changing the user experience in a fundamental way. We have this process called product review at Duolingo, where essentially we review all the product changes that are going to be implemented in the app, be it a change to a notification or if it's a huge brand new bet. We will bring it to senior leadership, including our CEO, Luis. How do we know if our CEO, Luis, likes an idea in product review? Without you finishing your proposal, he would just cut you and be like, Ship it, ship it. Then it's like, Oh my God, he loves this idea. Fed exit, How long is this going to take to get in the app? Why is this not in the

app already exposure to how senior leadership thinks, and honestly, just how a group of people that have been doing product for over a decade thinks is like immensely valuable. I think a lot of our PMS are energized by being the best at their craft, um, so I would love to take that further. One of my big aspirations at Duolingo is to build the best PM team, period.

Product at Duolingo

Duolingo

The Role of a Product Manager at Duolingo

Product managers at Duolingo own the entire product life cycle, focusing on creating and updating features to make a significant impact.

They work closely with the design team, taking risks and being innovative in developing new features.

The company's experimental AI team explored various applications of the technology, eventually leading to a conversational AI experience, while all changes in the app are tested through AB testing and data-driven metrics.

Duolingo's Experimental Approach to Product Development

Duolingo conducts around 300 A/B tests simultaneously, with the expectation that half will not work out.

The company celebrates failed experiments as a sign of innovation and fundamental changes to the user experience.

Product changes are reviewed by senior leadership, including the CEO, who often shows enthusiasm for ideas by immediately approving them.

Building the Best Product Management Team at Duolingo

The exposure to senior leadership and experienced product professionals is highly valuable.

The PMs at Duolingo are driven by a desire to excel in their craft.

The goal is to further enhance this energy and build the best PM team in the industry.