The Exchanges

Q AI. Join thousands of global companies that use Vanta to automate evidence collection, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Get 1000 dollars off Vanta when you go to Vanta.com slash Lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny. Okay, so for people that don't know anything about what Duolingo Streaks are, can you just first give a brief explanation of what is Duolingo Streaks? What is this feature all about?

A Well, presumably people know, uh, Duolingo is a language learning app. Um, the, the Duolingo streak tracks currently anyway, how many days in a row you've done a lesson. So you come to Duolingo, you do a lesson, your first lesson, you know, you'll start a streak and then every consecutive day that you come use the app, you'll extend your streak. And, and I should actually put an asterisk around how many days in a row, because we also have built flexibility into the features. So we have these things called streak freezes. It's like insurance for your streak. So You know, it's a pretty simple feature, you know, in, in theory, but over time we've layered on challenges and goal setting and rewards and, you know, social features. You know, a lot of our notifications are tied to the streak. So pretty simple feature to understand, but it's been a really rich feature for us to, to build on top of.

AI assessment note: “Duolingo streak tracks currently anyway, how many days in a row you've done a lesson”

Q Final question. Do you have any fun traditions at Duolingo amongst either the PM team or the company in general that might be delightful to share?

A We have way too many traditions to count. Um, I will share the weird tradition that we do at every retention standup. And this started during the pandemic. You know, we obviously used to stand up in person. And then, um, when we went remote, we did this thing where whoever's the last person to go would count down three, two, one, and then we'd all try to clap at the same time, which was kind of fun and dorky, but we fell in love with it. And four years later, we're still doing it recently. We've added, we all say yeehaw in unison afterwards. I can't tell you why, um, but trying to synchronize a clap via zoom and then all shouting yeehaw. I did this in a phone booth the other day. And after I came out, someone told me, you know, that those aren't as, uh, soundproof as you think, but you know, when you get a good opportunity to give a yeehaw, you kind of can't pass up on it. So.

AI assessment note: “I will share the weird tradition that we do at every retention standup.”

Q That's actually a good success rate. A lot of companies have only Uh, experiments be positive. What's your policy on is if it, if it's neutral, do you ship it or do you kill it?

A It really depends if, if we're adding something and it's, and it's neutral, we tend to, to, to shut it down because it's just more cognitive load. It's something that we're gonna have to start building around a new UI element that we have to figure out how it fits into our system. I'd say when we do ship a neutral experiment is. Something that, that we have real, uh, conviction around, okay, yeah, maybe this was neutral, but it's going to give us a new platform to then build on top of. So that experience might be neutral, but now we can build these DAU positive experiments. I mean, my general take there is though, in that case, build that in as part of your V one so that it, you know, you make sure that like, at least your hypothesis around this roadmap, you know, has play, you know, should probably be the case, but in general, Shutting down a neutral experiment so you don't introduce more complexity to the app is, is, is the way we tend to go.

AI assessment note: “we tend to, to, to shut it down because it's just more cognitive load”

Q it hits your goal, helps your girl most, but any other team can come in and be like, Hey Jackson, we need to work on some street stuff to help with learning. You're like, go for it. Does that just a tangent there? Uh, do they like work really closely with your team if they want to do some work in the code? Is it like, how does that work?

A Yeah. If, if, if you're, again, this is where I say there's soft ownership. We're not against teams doing things to the streak, but if we're going to do something, given, you know, we probably have multiple quarters worth of a roadmap around the street. I say probably we do, uh, multiple quarters of roadmap, uh, for what we can do to the streak. If other teams want to come and mess with it, okay, we got to just figure out how is that going to work with, you know, what, what our plans for the streak were. How do we make sure a lot of times when teams are coming in thinking, Hey, let's do this to the streak. They're like in context that we might have. And so there's as much of Like a much simpler version of what we're doing now, a bit of a knowledge sharing of saying, all right, well, this is what we think about the streak. This is what we've seen work. Hasn't worked. How does that influence some of the hypothesis that you have? And so I think getting that really, um, making sure the juice is worth the squeeze.

AI assessment note: “this is where I say there's soft ownership. We're not against teams doing things”

Q That's so funny. Okay. Anything else? And if there's like more than one more, definitely share, but any other really interesting lessons or wrong turns or insights?

A You know, I talked about streak freezes and we've done a lot with streak freeze, but I think if you're gonna make flexibility a thing, it's probably also useful thinking about how do you celebrate perfection? Um, and so we have a feature that we have. It is the simplest thing in the world. It's called perfect streak. And it's just, if you don't use the street freeze for a few days, we make your street click gold and we make your little progress bar on the calendar. Um, just look a little bit nicer. There's no reward for doing it. You don't get anything other than this nice little indication. And it is awesome. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is a simple feature. It is ultra not complex, and it is really powerful, not only for getting users to You know, as, as a bit of a reward, they'd be, Hey, you know, get to seven days, you know, without using a streak freeze and, you know, your streak becomes perfect, but it's also a really nice indication of users who aren't using streak freezes. Here is the thing that if you, uh, you know, if you don't use a streak freeze, which again, candidly, I would love for you never to use a streak freeze. If you don't use a streak freeze, your streak will stay, you know, perfect. It's funny. We, we actually just, you know, we're constantly, you know, responding to bug reports, uh, about the streak, you know, it is, I swear to God, we, we have that, w…

AI assessment note: “if you're gonna make flexibility a thing, it's probably also useful thinking about how”

Q That's such a good point. Like you look for cues to the app of tell me what I should pay attention to what's important. If you're just like fire explosions, you hit a streak. Oh, maybe I should pay attention to this feature. And then the push notifications obviously encourage you there too. Uh, anything else along those lines?

A Maybe final thing is, look, we ran so many tests on our Duolingo streak to figure out what worked. I mean, we have, we have a, we have a philosophy at Duolingo of tests at first. You know, we are a lot of times willing to test things. I really think that if you're gonna, if you're gonna try to introduce a streak or you wanna improve on the streak you have, like, don't get too caught up in the, the, the philosophy of, of everything. I mean, make sure your hypotheses feel like they're good, but my recommendation is just try things Things. And this is again, you said it earlier. It's like, this is much human psychology as anything. And as soon as that becomes the case, like you kind of just got to understand what users respond to. And the easiest way to do that is to stop spending time, you know, batting around ideas in a, in a conference room and just try some stuff. Um, so huge recommendation to like, if you're going to invest in a street, try and figure out what works through testing with users, um, rather than trying to get it perfect on the first try.

AI assessment note: “huge recommendation to like, if you're going to invest in a street, try and figure out what works”