korrents

What Albert Cheng thinks about design

@albert-cheng · 26 positions · 0 changes of mind

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

Albert Cheng did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

13 dated positions, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Albert Cheng has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingAfter a defeat people want encouragement, not a list of their mistakes — so a learning product should lead with what the user did well.

    Their wordsWhen you lose a game now as opposed to surfacing your blunders and your like horrible stuff that you did, we flip it on its head. And so we show you your brilliant moves, your best moves. And we have coach say something encouraging. You know, losing just part of learning like keep it up, that type of thing. That change alone was pretty dramatic for us. It grew game reviews by 25%, subscriptions by 20%

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 2nd of 26 in this recording

  3. Our readingA rising share of statistically insignificant experiments is the signal that a team has exploited an area too far and should go back to exploring.

    Their wordsAnd if I'm starting to see like more and more experiments that are not statistically significant, that may be a signal to me to say, okay, we might have kind of tried to exploit a little bit too far. Like there might not be as much juice to squeeze.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 4th of 26 in this recording

  5. Our readingAI has made prototyping fast but has not yet joined it to the workflow, so at any real scale the handoffs between functions are still there.

    Their wordsI would say though that something that is kind of annoying to me is that we haven't yet figured out the bridging from the tinkering to the workflow quite as seamlessly as I would like.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 6th of 26 in this recording

  7. Our readingReverse trials work where a product accumulates lock-in, which is why they suit B2B tools and rarely beat an ordinary free trial in consumer products.

    Their wordsI think if you have especially a B2B feature where you may have some lock in reverse trials can be super powerful. You just want to get people in there. You don't need to ask for their credit card because they're using your CRM or they're investing quite a lot of time in like building out, you know, material and content. And so by the time that window drops, you actually like feel, oh man, I probably should keep this and and start paying. I think for a lot of consumer products, it's a little bit harder for that to work. And so I've typically seen more just normal free trials be be the norm.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 8th of 26 in this recording

    investing

  9. Our readingA consumer app with 30 to 40 percent day-one retention is in solid shape, and much below that calls the users' intent into question.

    Their wordsI think when you have your D1 retention somewhere around like the 30 or 40% mark, like that's quite solid, I think, for for a consumer app.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 10th of 26 in this recording

  11. Our readingFor a daily-frequency product it is existing-user retention, not new-user retention, that compounds — and mature companies should put most of their energy there.

    Their wordsI think especially if you have a product that has daily frequency like that's actually the retention that matters the most is that like of your existing user base that has developed a habitual pattern how sticky is your product and it's that retention rate that really compounds and build that builds that daily habit.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 11th of 26 in this recording

    energy

  13. Our readingA mature product's growth comes from resurrecting dormant users, so the returning-user experience deserves to be designed as deliberately as onboarding.

    Their wordsAnd it's actually worth spending some time making sure that that kind of resurrected, for lack of a better word, experience inside the product is really excellent and that you find novel ways to try to bring them back.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 13th of 26 in this recording

  15. Our readingLarge language models are bad at chess: pattern recognition is not the same capability as searching one position very deeply.

    Their wordsYou know, interestingly, LM themselves are quite bad at playing chess. Like, they hallucinate moves. They look at patterns, right? They're they're very good at pattern recognition, but not so good at going super super super deep on a specific chess thing.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 17th of 26 in this recording

    LLMs

  17. Our readingWorking at a company turns you into a power user, which is why pattern matching fails and even an experienced growth leader is wrong all the time.

    Their wordsI've worked a lot of companies right but I'm wrong all the time and I think consumer behavior can be very fickle and especially when you work at a company you become a power user naturally. So sometimes you you may forget like what the actual user experience is for a brand new user.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 19th of 26 in this recording

  19. Our readingYou cannot manufacture virality, but you can find the moments users already screenshot and make those moments far better.

    Their wordsSo as opposed to going against I guess human intuition and trying to get them to share stuff that they otherwise wouldn't on the margins want to share like lean into it more actually like grab the moments where users are already organically screenshotting and make those much much much better and you can kind of 5x or 10x and and drive a lot of growth that way too.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 22nd of 26 in this recording

  21. Our readingGamification needs three things at once — a tight core loop, a metagame to strive at, and a profile that accumulates the user's investment.

    Their wordsThen you need a metag game, which for Duolingo is kind of like the path, but it's also the leaderboard, achievements, kind of long-term things that you're going to strive to such that you have like long-term, I guess, motivation uh to continue doing the thing. And then the profile is also critical because you build up a profile over time. It's a reflection of your investment inside the product experience. And so when you nail those three things, you can end up with a long-term learning journey that can be quite successful.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 23rd of 26 in this recording

    motivation

  23. Our readingMost newcomers to a skill lose their first encounter with it, and losing costs retention — so beginners need a route around the real game.

    Their wordslike what we see is that over 75% of our new users, they classify themselves as like, I'm completely new to chess or I'm a beginner. And unfortunately, if you're new to chess and you're a beginner, you're not going to have that fun of a time playing live games. We see this in the data. It's like less than a third of those users actually win their first game. And when you lose a game, user retention is 10% worse than when you win a game.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 24th of 26 in this recording

  25. Our readingDoing PR before you have evidence customers want the thing is risky, because the publicity creates a sunk cost that makes the team see a failing product through.

    Their wordsAnd the third one is like we did a lot of actually PR uh prior to the service going out just to get the word out. Um and you know PR has has its time and place. Uh but I think doing it before you have validation that customers definitely want the thing is quite risky. It can lead to a lot of sunk cost uh once you get it out because you're you're just you know you need to see it through.

    ↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com 26th of 26 in this recording