Duolingo announced they’re done calling it “User Experience.“ Now it’s “Product Experience.“ Cue the design community having feelings about it.

Honestly, I get why people are worried. Words matter. They shape how we think about our work, who we’re serving, what success looks like. But watching this whole debate unfold, I keep thinking about something simpler: the work itself doesn’t disappear just because someone changes what they call it.

The Label Isn’t the Thing

When I was developing my Xieng Mieng character, I went through dozens of sketches trying to get him right. For months, I kept calling him “the trickster” in my notes. But that label started shaping how I thought about him—always scheming, always looking for someone to outsmart. He felt mean. Unsympathetic.

The breakthrough came when I stopped thinking about what to call him and started thinking about who he actually was. Clever, yes. But also kind. Someone who’d use his wit to help people, not hurt them. The stories got better when I focused on his character, not his category.

Companies rebrand things constantly. Sometimes it reflects real change, sometimes it’s just new leadership wanting to make their mark. What matters more than the name on the org chart is whether the people doing the work still understand their responsibility to the humans using what they build.

People Still Need Advocates

The shift from “user” to “product” does signal something worth paying attention to, though. It’s a different center of gravity. Product-focused thinking tends to optimize for business metrics—engagement, retention, revenue. User-focused thinking asks whether those optimizations actually make people’s lives better.

Both perspectives have value. You need sustainable business models. You need products that solve real problems. But when business goals and human needs conflict—and they sometimes do—someone needs to speak up for the people.

That’s what user experience design has always been about, really. Not the deliverables or the process or the job title. It’s about making sure someone in the room is asking: “But how does this feel for the person using it?“

The Work Continues

Whether you call yourself a Product Designer, User Experience Designer, or Digital Problem Solver, the fundamental questions remain the same: What do people actually need? How can we make this easier to understand? What are we accidentally making harder?

The best designers I know don’t get hung up on titles. They stay curious about human behavior. They test their assumptions. They push back when features add complexity without adding value. They remember that behind every click and tap is a real person trying to get something done.

That kind of thinking doesn’t go away because someone updates the company org chart. It survives because it’s useful. Because products built with genuine human insight tend to work better than products built without it.

Moving Forward

So yeah, call it whatever makes sense for your company. Product Experience, Digital Experience, Human-Centered Design—the specific words matter less than the commitment behind them.

What matters is keeping people at the center of the process. Measuring success by how well you solve real problems, not just how well you hit business metrics. Staying connected to the humans using what you build.

The label might change, but the responsibility doesn’t: design things that actually work for the people who need to use them. Everything else is just paperwork.