# Robert Managad > Product Design Lead at Duolingo Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/robertmanagad Product Designer with 7+ years of industry experience in Ed-tech, Growth, and Monetization. 2+ years experience in designing for conversational AI: LLM prompting, chained evals, and generative visuals, voice, and SFX. Currently designing an ai-powered conversational speaking feature @ Duolingo. Before this, I co-led the company's Monetization design output leading up to IPO and immediately after. ## Work Experience ### Product Design Lead, Language Learning @ Duolingo Jan 2024 – Present | New York City Metropolitan Area Lead designer on Duolingo's AI-powered conversational speaking feature. ### Senior Product Designer, Monetization @ Duolingo Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States 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 ### Product Designer II, Monetization @ Duolingo Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States 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 ### Product Designer I, Monetization @ Duolingo Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States 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 ### Product Designer, Design Systems @ Workday Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area 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. ### Teaching Assistant, Freshmen Design Lab @ Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Greater Pittsburgh Region Provided constructive, challenging, and nurturing feedback to School of Design freshmen in their second semester in the program. Advised students in their setting of personal and professional goals. Advocated for student wellbeing and lives-outside-of-studio by communicating students' academic demands to instructors. Mentored students by helping them grow both hard and soft skills. Lead workshops on Adobe AfterEffects and Adobe Illustrator for first-time users. This was an on-site role from January to March. It became a remote role from March to May in response to COVID-19. ### Tour Guide and Ambassador, School of Design @ Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design Jan 2017 – Jan 2020 Acted as an ambassador for the broader School of Design community—provided tours to prospective students and contributed to prospective student info sessions. ### Teaching Assistant, Communications Design Studio III: Design Systems @ Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 Provided critical feedback and guidance to Communications Design students in their third year of the BDes program. Advised the development of design systems, personal identity, and relevant global emerging issues in student design processes. Developed presentations and workshops on brand identity, concept development, animation, and accessibility. ### Teaching Assistant, Communication Design for Non-Majors @ Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 Provided critical feedback to undergraduate and graduate students in and out of the classroom environment; held workshops on type and personality, color and message, and paper and texture; demonstrating Adobe suite tools; wrote course content for verbal presentation. ### Graphic Designer, Marketing & Communications @ Carnegie Mellon University Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Greater Pittsburgh Area Developed and prepared visuals to accompany stories, sustained cohesion between existing Carnegie Mellon collateral, protected the Carnegie Mellon brand in both written and creative outputs, and created interactive visuals to increase the university’s global visibility. ### Graphic Designer, Athletics @ Carnegie Mellon University Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 Updated and aligned Carnegie Mellon University's Athletics and Recreation Department's brand identity to the university's core branding system. Created modifiable print and web collateral. ### Visual Designer, Visual Language System @ Woodland Hills School District Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Greater Pittsburgh Area Worked with the Woodland Hills School District in to envision design and policy innovations to school transportation. This project aimed to identify systems of impact and to articulate challenges and opportunities associated with those systems. Primary stakeholders included underrepresented K-12 students, families of students, and school admin. Highlights: + Developed UX concepts for an interactive mobile/print game for the bus environment. + Led efforts on the Visual Language System in terms of brand, content strategy, typography, and color. + Led efforts on the formation of a design system (component library). + Created workshops and user-testing (AB) experiences for elementary school students. ## Education ### Bachelor of Design in Communications Design Carnegie Mellon University Jan 2016 – Jan 2020 ### Advanced Product Design Useful School Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/robertmanagad - Portfolio: https://robert-managad.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/robertmanagad JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/robertmanagad/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-30