Lead designer on Duolingo's AI-powered conversational speaking feature.

I was a senior product designer in the Monetization Area, primarily focused on developing a sustainable and holistic business model while staying true to the mission of providing free education to the world.

I led highest-priority 0-to-1 projects for Monetization's In-App Purchases (IAPs) and Subscriptions team, bridged studio and product design work streams, mentored junior designers across all of our product areas, and represented Duolingo on the international Config stage in 2023.

Highlights

+ Was the design lead for the In-App Purchases team, working with the lead Product Manager and lead Engineer to discover new product opportunities, plan and set quarterly OKRs, allocate design resources, conduct retros on projects and team processes, conduct team brainstorms to invite all team ICs into the discovery and optimization process, mentored junior designers and engineers, and planned team events to keep morale high

+ Led cross-functional design sprints to identify new product pillars for the In-App Purchases space. Then, led 0-to-1 design on two NDA primary surfaces for the IAPs team, handling prototyping, UI design, UX design, animation resourcing, and stakeholder management

+ Contributed to increased revenue of in-app sales of virtual goods by 86% YoY ($5.1M -> $9.4M) from Q3 2022 to Q3 2023 by designing new pillars and optimizations for existing features

+ Launched adding Legendary Level, a monetized optional challenge level, to all lessons on the home screen, leading to a substantial increase in feature revenue, feature recognition, and subscription bookings

+ Launched Match Madness Combos and Match Madness Frenzy Mode on iOS and Android, leading to an increase in IAP purchases and repeat engagement with the feature

+ Represented Duolingo at Config, Figma's annual conference, by giving a talk titled "Embracing Art to Enhance Your Product", a love-letter to advocating for the brilliance of artists and their role in Duolingo's art-forward product process

Products/features shipped:

Super Duolingo (subscription) rebrand + design system, Practice Hub, subscription web purchase flow redesign, web landing page redesign, new powerups + shop items, combo mechanics for a Duolingo minigame, Family Plan optimizations, purchase flow optimizations

Highlights

+ Led design on the Practice Hub, a one-stop shop for all practice modes in the app. This was a new initiative that reduced IA complexity, created a new ontology for "practice" in Duolingo, developed new monetization avenues, responded to a massive redesign of the app homepage, and catalyzed the adoption of cross-area design partnerships

+ Led the rebrand of Duolingo Plus to Super Duolingo, which involved evolving the Monetization design system into a new visual language, collaborating with illustrators and animators to integrate assets into the product, scaling the rebrand to iOS, Android, and Web interfaces, and working with the PM lead in roadmapping and launch decisions.

+ Co-led 3 major UXR studies on Family Plan, Shop, and Super Duolingo, which created a baseline process for getting qualitative insights on new initiatives + helped us identify process improvements to the UXR pipeline.

+ Made the experience of earning, buying, and spending gems/items more delightful, which introduced new animation patterns and new power-ups to the app. This involved a holistic visual redesign of how gems and in-lesson items look inside of Duolingo, collaborating closely with in-house animation partners

+ Interviewed 50+ university and industry candidates during high-volume recruiting periods

+ Onboarded and mentored a junior designer towards their success as a trusted monetization designer and their promotion within one year

+ [Interim] Co-led monetization IC design efforts after senior designers left the team and company

Products/tools shipped:

Family Plan, Mistakes Inbox, rotating events for Duolingo minigames, localization slack tool (#help-loc-design), in-app purchases (Gems), Confluence-based design hiring guidelines, in-app animated promotional videos, purchase flow and feature promotion optimizations

Highlights

+ Founding member of the In-App Purchases team and launched rotating liveops-style events for Duolingo's minigames + in-app currency packages

+ Self-initiated and led the creation of a new internal slack tool, #help-loc-design, to bring localization upstream to the design process, which reduced the number of flagged localization strings in high-impact projects app-wide by nearly half

+ Co-created a new architecture for university design hiring, which included new training protocol and refined interview guidelines that now live in Duolingo's Confluence pages. I led the Hiring Design OKR Group and its team of 10 designers to reflect, refine, and improve our interviewing framework and processes.

+ Co-designed and launched Family Plan in March 2021, a new subscription package that lets groups of 2-6 learners use premium Duolingo features under one plan. This led to an extremely significant increase in bookings.

+ Assisted in the production design and optimization of Mistakes Inbox, a subscription feature that houses all learner's mistakes in one hub.

+ Worked with an external animation partner (Gunner) to introduce two new Plus video spotlights to our rotation, leading to a significant increase of bookings.

+ Created a brand book for Duolingo Plus to be distributed to our external creative partners, reducing comms requests for assets, use guidelines, and questions regarding our feature ecosystem

Designer on the Design System team.

Highlights

+ Designed UI flows and internal guidelines for a navigational pattern for Workday's app suite; developed strategies for future pattern iterations.

+ Developed open communication strategies to align and unify efforts across Workday's apps teams. Created partnerships between apps teams and the Design System team to ensure alignment over proposed pattern and guidelines.

+ Consistently synced with stakeholders (Product Managers, Product Designers, Developers) to discuss the benefits and costs of pattern implementation over the near future.

+ Worked within a core product team to push for the development of core values and philosophies in Workday's Design System, Canvas.