Why Duolingo puts design at the top
Three amazing facts about Duolingo: a product universally loved for its design and making learning delightful for millions around the globe!
It’s one of the rare companies to have design part of the C-suite (Chief Design Officer), signalling design to be strategically as important as product, engineering or marketing.
At a whopping 15% of the entire work force (~100 out of ~750), Design is the second biggest department after engineering with everyone from researchers, interaction designers, visual designers, illustrators and animators reporting into one department!
Their first major acquisition was…. wait.... an animation studio as to my knowledge they are the only tech product to consider animation and illustration critical to their product success!
It remains a great case study of what can happen when a company truly cares about design (and put its money where its mouth is :))