Lenny Distilled

Users need different things at different lifecycle stages

Discovery → User Psychology

Give more flexibility when a user is starting their streak. Eventually, once people get on long streaks, you don't want to give them as much flexibility.

Jackson ShuttleworthBehind the product: Duolingo streaks
Nuanced

When we tested some of them on Home, we switched it from 90/10 to 10/90. So 10% recall, 90% discovery. And while people want discovery, they probably don't want 90% discovery, instead of 90% recall.

Gustav SöderströmThe science of product, big bets, and how AI is impacting the future of music
With caveats

What we hear from users again and again, though, is that they say that they get trapped in a taste bubble. So I love my Spotify, I love this, but I'm a little bit bored with EDM now and Spotify's not suggesting something completely new. And if you think about that problem, it may sound similar to the recommendation problem, it's just another recommendation problem, but it's actually fundamentally different because when you're recommending another EDM track inside the EDM playlist, you have a lot of signal from that user that they like EDM. But if you're going to recommend a completely new genre, by definition, you have no idea.

Gustav SöderströmThe science of product, big bets, and how AI is impacting the future of music