A sneak peek into Product Review, a key decision-making process at Duolingo

At Duolingo, we have a very important and unique process at Duolingo called Product Review.?

What is Product Review??

Product Review is a meeting where Product and Design leadership review and approve changes to our products, from small changes like buttons to entirely new features. Anyone in the company can participate in Product Review so they can get transparent insight into how key decision makers at this company think and make decisions.?

Regular attendees include our CEO, our Chief Design Officer, and various leaders of the Product function. This is how we ensure consistency and crossfunctional alignment across all Duolingo products.?

To prepare for Product Review, Duos (our employees) sign up for a five or ten minute slot, prepare a presentation with all the relevant information, and practice to ensure that they cover key talking points and allow time for feedback in ten short minutes.?

Peek into a real Product Review!

Recently, Product Manager Amia Ross and Product Designer Leah Lee proposed a new promotion for Video Call – our newest AI-powered feature that allows learners to practice their conversational speaking skills with our character, Lily, in a video call format.?

• The problem:?Video Call is only available on our highest subscription tier, Duolingo Max. How do we get more non-Max users to try Video Call?
• The background:?Previously, we used a video teaser of the feature (exhibit A) to promote our Max subscription tier. This resulted in an additional 1000 more users starting a Max free trial per day, and we believed that it was possible to further increase trials and ultimately conversions to Duolingo Max.?
• The proposal:?Have Lily “call” our free learners and actually have a conversation with them while they’re using the app.?Amia and Leah proposed that we actually allow learners to have a conversation with Lily and experience the Video Call feature in all its glory. This way, we can give our free learners a real “free taste” of our Video Call feature.?

How Amia and Leah felt going into Product Review:?

We’ll let them tell you!?

The outcome:?

It went great! Amia and Leah presented their spec, and then leadership gave their feedback, which was short and sweet. After a few small visual tweaks, it was approved (exhibit B). This means we are a go for the experiment, which rolls out on iOS soon!?

Looking for a workplace that values transparency and enables Product Managers to lead their own features and push new ideas? We're hiring! Check out our open roles here.