Why Duolingo is ditching UX and Perplexity's latest milestone
Plus: State of AI report, Gemini Canvas, how to make data-driven decisions, the world's most innovative companies 2025
Hi product people 👋,
Coming up in today’s briefing, we take a look at why DuoLingo’s VP of design is ditching the term UX. Plus, hand picked insights from the latest State of AI report from McKinsey and new data which suggests that despite a bunch of AI features getting recently added to dating apps, users may not be too keen on AI-powered features after all.
Gemini's new image editing tool is put to the test, a new tool vibe coded from scratch by Stripe's PM that you can use at work and why - despite Google's VP of product saying he "hates" the term AI agent - that's not stopping companies from shipping them. Get up to speed with all the latest new AI agent releases from leading companies.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
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Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product:
Knowledge Series - How to build your own mini apps you can use at work
We’ll kick this off with our first batch of apps by building an OKR tracker that assigns tasks to team members, a productivity tool with a difference and a fun roulette style wheel to help you decide who should present your next demo so that all team members can showcase their skills.
Analysis - Gemini’s new image editing: does it live up to the hype?
In this analysis, we dive into Google's hyped Gemini 2.0 flash image generation model. We'll put it through its paces with 8 different tasks, testing its new image editing capabilities in real-time. Tasks include color-changing, item swapping, side profile creation, watermark removal, adding text, and even generating illustrated stories. See how it performs and if it really delivers on the promises. (Department of Product)
UX - Why DuoLingo’s head of design is killing the term “UX designer”
In a surprising turn of events, the Head of UX at Duolingo, Mig Reyes announced on LinkedIn that the company has decided to completely change the term UX design and replace it with PX design. Find out why. (Medium)
Case study - How Figma redesigned their notifications system
In this interview Jay chats with Tammy Taabassum, a Product Designer at Figma, who shows how she redesigned notifications for Figma. You will learn about Tammy’s design process, handling tough user feedback, design explorations for Figma notifications and more. (Figma)
Product skills - The right way to make data-driven decisions
Fueled by the promise of concrete insights, organizations are increasingly prioritizing data in their decision-making processes. But that process can easily go wrong. Many leaders don’t understand that their decisions are only as good as how they interpret the data. In this episode, Professor Michael Luca of Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School share a framework for making better decisions by interpreting data more effectively. (Harvard Business Review)
Report - The world’s most innovative companies 2025
The annual report from Fast Company that ranks the world’s most innovative companies is here. DuoLingo is at number 10. Who is number one? (Fast Company)
New product features and innovation this week
A new startup called Sesame has unveiled one of the most impressive AI live voice products yet. In a piece called “Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice”, the team outlines the technology that underpins the voice and it’s seriously impressive. The company has plans for AR glasses where users can interact with their companion throughout the day. You can try a demo of it here.
In other news…
Google has unveiled two major new products this week. The first is Canvas - a new interactive space where you can refine your documents and code that works a little like similar offerings from competitors. Documents can be edited directly within the canvas and the coding feature allows you to build simple prototypes and preview how they look in real time. The second is Audio Overview which uses NotebookLM’s technology to transform your Google Slides, Deep Research reports and other documents into podcasts. After a slow start, it’s becoming clear that Google has firmly caught up with its rivals. Watch it in action here.
Stability AI (remember them?) has released a new model that’s capable of turning 2D images into photorealistic 3D scenes.
Meanwhile…
AI is transforming UX personalization. This week, Adobe unveiled a new feature called “brand concierge” which allows companies to create deeply personalized experiences by completely transforming the UI according to the user’s preferences and data.
Perplexity’s new “Ask Perplexity” service, which allows users to ask it questions on X, has gained over 130,000 followers in just two months. Following its announcement of a smartphone collaboration with Deutsche Telekom, an integrated digital assistant for Android, a new browser coming soon, and even its own branded coffee, Perplexity’s current market strategy appears to be “everything, everywhere, all at once.”
New AI agent features and products
Ryan Salva, senior director of product at Google and an ex-GitHub Copilot leader, said he’s come to “hate” the word “agents.” “I think that our industry overuses the term ‘agent’ to the point where it is almost nonsensical,” Salva told TechCrunch in an interview. “[It is] one of my pet peeves.”
Whatever you think of AI agents, companies are still shipping AI agent capabilities. Zoom announced a series of new AI agent capabilities as part of its Companion 2.0 this week an here’s a snapshot of the latest offerings:
Tools you can use
Dust - build custom agents for all product work including data analysis, engineering and productivity.
Spryngtime - a free Docusign clone that was “vibe-coded” into existence by a Stripe PM.
Tweek - a beautifully designed, simple to-do list and calendar that feels just like using a paper calendar.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Global VR headset shipments fell 12% YoY, marking their third successive year of declines. AR smart glasses shipments also dropped but are expected to grow 30% in 2025. Meta dominates the VR market with 84% market share but if the VR market is in decline, does it even matter?
It's getting easier to fill AI-related roles. According to a recent State of AI McKinsey study, fewer respondents reported difficulties in recruiting for these positions compared to previous years. The trend was clear across all industries but design and data visualization rank among the easiest. Other stats from the report: 78% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function (up from 72% in early 2024). Less than 20% of organizations are tracking KPIs for gen AI solutions (though this has one of the biggest impacts on bottom line). Only 1% of company executives describe their gen AI rollouts as "mature".
Dating app product teams at Hinge, Bumble, Grindr and others have gone all-in on developing new AI features, but users aren’t convinced. Only 10% of women agree AI-powered dating apps lead to more successful relationships, half that of men (20%). Just 4% of users strongly agree that dating apps with AI features will lead to more successful relationships. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for a new dating app product that explicitly introduces a zero-AI policy? Study from Boston University.
41% of successful logins across websites protected by Cloudflare involve compromised passwords. New analysis by Cloudflare.
Deepseek is already everywhere in China - including over 20 different cars, all smartphone manufacturers and 100+ hospitals. Sam Altman wants it banned in the US, calling it “state-subsidized” and “state-controlled”.
AI traffic is converting at a lower rate than traditional traffic. A new study shows retail and travel businesses are seeing an uptick in traffic from generative AI sources including 1,200% surge in U.S. retail sites and a 1,700% surge in U.S. travel sites (July 2024 to Feb 2025) from generative AI sources. But users from AI traffic are 9% less likely to convert compared to other sources of traffic. Full report.
A new report predicts that AI agents will kill traditional customer loyalty as D2A (direct to agent) commerce takes over from D2C.
Other product news in brief
🇪🇺 European companies have submitted a letter to the EU, encouraging it to build its own tech stacked dubbed the “EuroStack”.
🧑⚖️ HR SaaS company Rippling is suing Deel over allegations of spying.
👋 Netflix’s former gaming chief is leaving the company.
Paid subscribers get the full DoP Substack including: The Knowledge Series for sharpening their tech skills, AI tutorials for putting AI into practice at work and DoP Deep dive reports to learn from the world’s top tech companies.
Great read as always. AI agents is over-used and tbh, I haven't found much use for them in the real world as yet. Hopefully once the hype cycle calms down we'll see more helpful use cases.