The Duolingo Method: Collaboration As A Core Practice | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

The Duolingo Math team treats collaboration as a continuous practice rather than a one-time handoff from design to engineering. Designers, engineers, and product managers co-create ideas, validate them through rapid prototypes, and refine features together. This approach helps the team make better decisions quickly while building entirely new learning experiences.

Ideating Together

• The Math team develops new lessons and games without established templates or patterns to follow.
• Designers, engineers, and product managers begin projects together in a shared FigJam file.
• After agreeing on a direction, designers create detailed Figma mockups, including interactions and motion.
• Engineers participate early by evaluating technical complexity and commenting on implementation challenges.
• Jira is connected directly to Figma, reducing context switching during development.

Experimenting Through Rapid Prototyping

• Engineers quickly build initial prototypes using components from Duolingo’s design system.
• Designers and engineers share Figma files, working prototypes, questions, and feedback in Slack.
• The team repeats a “prototype, test, tweak” cycle for each feature.
• Duolingo’s “show don’t tell” principle encourages building and experiencing ideas instead of debating them abstractly.
• Prototypes reveal how an interaction actually feels, helping the team test assumptions and make decisions before investing in a polished implementation.

Polishing and Shipping Together

• Continuous collaboration allows the team to make decisions and polish features during development.
• The team may simplify animations or remove nonessential mechanics to ship faster.
• When exploring educational games, Duolingo first created a batch of simple prototypes instead of building two fully developed games.
• The team tested seven different prototypes to learn what resonated with users and prioritized features based on those findings.

The Duolingo method replaces rigid handoffs with shared ownership, frequent communication, and working software. For exploratory products, teams should involve engineers early, prototype quickly, and use real user or team feedback to guide what gets polished and shipped.