Why Duolingo?

🙌🏻 Dear friends at Duolingo,

My name is Yixi Liu, an HCI master’s student at the University of Washington. As I browsed the job postings on your website, I was thrilled to see an opening for a product design intern. I am deeply interested in working at Duolingo, and I believe my experience puts me in a good position to meaningfully contribute to Duolingo’s values and missions. 

I believe my UX design experience aligns well with Duolingo’s design approach. In particular, I am very passionate about leveraging a gamified language for educational purposes. During college, I designed an ocean-debris-collecting web game for kids to learn recycling in a fun and engaging way. I have also designed an interactive installation for K-12 education on sustainability (more details in my portfolio). I wish to join Duolingo and further apply gamification to product design so as to make language learning more enriching and enjoyable.

As a multilingual speaker, I am always excited to learn new languages. In college, I learned Cantonese and Korean. Now, I am dabbling into Japanese. Because of my very own learning experience, I was able to relate to other language learners. While I enjoyed the benefits of speaking foreign languages, I also realized that some of the pains and struggles are much to the detriment of effective language learning. If I were offered the chance to join Duolingo, I would use my experience and passion in design and languages to enhance the experience for my fellow learners. 

What distinguishes me from many other product designers is my rich experience in visual and creative design. I worked as a visual designer for years before transitioning into product design, and I love approaching problems with creative energy and delivering solutions with delightful aesthetics. With that being said, I truly admire Duolingo’s commitment to creativity and aesthetics. I believe great ideas flourish in an environment where creative minds meet, and I was fascinated by this opportunity to work with your team who share the same passion for building fun and meaningful products. 

I am familiar with applying design principles to solve real-world challenges. During my time at StubHub, I worked with cross-functional teams to improve the payment experience for ticket sellers. During the process, I familiarized myself with StubHub’s design language and applied that knowledge to deliver designs that are now implemented on their website. 

I look forward to further discussing the internship opportunity and my qualifications with you. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. 

Sincerely,

Yixi

💚🧡