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🤿 harsh truths

🤿 harsh truths

is the era of UX over?

Ridd
May 02, 2025

This week we’re going deep with Mig Reyes who is the VP of Product Experience at Duolingo (and a design director at Instagram before that).

He brings the energy and shares a ton of tactics including:

Common portfolio review mistakes
The communication skill that builds influence
How to succeed in executive product reviews
How Mig revamped design management at Duolingo
Why Duolingo changed from “UX” to “Product Experience”
+ a lot more

But the real reason I love this episode is that he shares some potentially harsh truths that I think a lot more designers need to hear… 👇

🤝 WITH GRANOLA

Alright picture this…

You’re in CRIT and you’re getting a bunch of feedback from everyone on the call so you’re taking notes as fast as you can so you know where to iterate…

Sound familiar?

Well thankfully those days are over…

All you have to do is run Granola in the background the next time you’re talking with people on your team (don’t worry there’s no creepy meeting bot).

You can kinda think of Granola like Apple notes but it transcribes CRIT for you 😮

You can even make a CRIT template to pull out specific action items or capture all of the questions you were asked.

I never start a meeting without Granola and I strongly believe that designers everywhere should be using it.

They’re offering 3 months free for you and anyone on your team all you have to do click the link to get it 👇

🎓 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Harsh truths designers need to hear

1 — You can’t say “UX” anymore

Mig made something very clear in our conversation: if you define yourself as a “UX Designer” then you’re probably not even going to get a look at companies like Duolingo, Instagram, etc.

“this is an uncomfortable thing to say in the industry but I do think UX design is an archaic term”

Mig Reyes

I constantly see people on r/uxdesign who say they can’t get an interview and then I click through to their portfolio and see a heading with “UX/UI/Accessibility”. Defining yourself like that makes me wonder if you’re stuck in the past 😬

2 — We just rebranded visual design

As an industry we’ve looked down on visual design as “pushing pixels” for a decade. So it’s funny that everyone is now talking about “craft”.

Spoiler: craft = visual design. We just rebranded it 😅

“here's what craft means to Duolingo: your visual design is very good. You have a good prototype. You have interaction design details that make us go, wow, that's nice. You have built and designed work that looks like it belongs in other people's hands. Visual design actually really, really matters.”

Mig Reyes

Mig explains how there’s a funnel to hiring. When he opens your portfolio you have mere seconds to convince him your visual design hits the bar.

“if your visual design's not there, we close the tab. If your visual design is good, we then investigate what was the product challenge, how was it? Cool. Now I'm interested.”

Mig Reyes

If you’re interested in what Mig is looking for after he confirms your craft, it’s 1) the product/business challenge and 2) why your design met the goal.

3 — Process is overrated

Output > process (especially in the early touchpoints).

“I don’t want to see sticky notes on a wall. That's not what we're hiring for… designers give way too much context with lots of build up. All I want to see first and foremost is the work.”

Mig Reyes

That’s why in portfolio reviews you’re only allowed 3-5 slides of high-fidelity output (and no text!) 😮

This mirrors to how Duolingo runs design reviews internally too. No decks. Just show the work.

4 — It’s time for a new wave of design managers

Mig was given a mandate by leadership to level up the design org so what was the first thing he did? Flip design management on its head…

“Design management in the industry has devolved into paper pushing, running performance reviews, you know, doing a lot of hand wavy organizational things and not enough leading design leading product.”

Mig Reyes

So I asked Mig what makes for an exceptional design manager. Here are some of my notes:

You know the product deeply and are responsible for the quality of every pixel. If the work is falling short you have to call it out before it hits exec desks.
You’re an excellent coach who communicates the underlying “why” when something falls short and people look at you as a safe place to learn from
You can fluidly jump between top-level company strategy and design system details

“ I've gotta know the names of our components. I'm gonna articulate the details of why something feels off by a few milliseconds all the way to here's where we're headed as a product and, you know, in the next several years.“"

Mig Reyes

5 — Speak up or get passed up

The most successful designers are proactive communicators.

“Making sure everyone around you knows what’s in your head is one of the most important things you can do to grow as a designer”

Mig Reyes

Here’s why…

Design leaders are constantly trying to figure out who is the best fit for new projects internally. There’s a skill-matching element for sure, but also Mig wants to know “who cares about this problem?”

“the only way I know is if a designer is broadcasting their goals, their hopes, their desires, what they're worried about, what they're mad at, what they're excited about. And the designers that find ways to comfortably share what's in their head are the people that are then top of mind and first in line for opportunity”

Mig Reyes

Letting people know what you care about (or what feels off today) turns you into a magnet for opportunities.

There’s a lot more in the full episode. It’s definitely one of the more entertaining interviews I’ve had in a while 👇