CASE STUDY / PRODIGY
Prodigy Education: Orchestrating Multi-Persona Growth Across Digital and Physical Ecosystems
Role: Product Designer & Product Owner (Growth Squad & Accelerator Squad)
Focus: Multi-Persona Systems, Contextual Field Research, Omnichannel E-Commerce, Experimentation Infrastructure
Drove conversion rate optimization, in-classroom field testing, and physical e-commerce initiatives across a massive edtech platform, shifting the focus from isolated experiments to foundational growth infrastructure.
01 / THE CORE PROBLEM
A Multi-Sided Ecosystem Disconnect
Prodigy’s fantasy math game commanded massive organic engagement among elementary students, but its acquisition, monetization, and retail funnels suffered structural drop-offs. Daily end-users held zero purchasing authority, while parents and teachers had divergent motivations. Student-centric marketing failed to communicate curriculum alignment or academic return-on-investment. Physical Epics figurines sat in warehouses without an integrated storefront explaining their lore and digital companion unlocks. The growth team lacked unlogged visitor tracking and feature-flag architecture, restricting testing to risky, monolithic releases.
ECOSYSTEM / THREE PERSONAS
DISCOVERY / CLASSROOMS + 200,000-USER COHORTS
Contextual Research Across Ecosystem Levels
The 60-second constraint
I shadowed educators inside elementary classrooms during active school days. Teachers operated in chaotic environments and had less than a minute between lessons. Lengthy marketing copy was skipped; curriculum alignment needed to be instantly verifiable. School firewalls blocked social-media scripts, making standard social referral widgets useless.
The shared device wall
I analyzed behavior from 200,000 user cohorts through FullStory, Domo, and Optimizely. 65% of checkout abandonment occurred when children initiated a membership purchase on family devices, encountered a credit-card paywall, and left without looping in a parent.
The email domain paradox
Teachers using official educational domains (.edu, .on.ca) activated at 42%, compared with 50% for generic personal email accounts. Yet institutional accounts demonstrated higher long-term classroom retention and more student invites. Optimizing for the right account type mattered more than raw registration volume.
02 / THE PROCESS & STRATEGIC TRADE-OFFS
The Process & Strategic Trade-Offs
Experimentation Architecture: I led implementation of a comprehensive feature-flag framework and client-side unauthenticated event tracking, enabling rapid, timeboxed A/B tests without blocking production releases.
For Parents: I replaced chaotic in-game graphics on the membership sales page with three value pillars: Authority—curriculum standards and math skill progression; Entertainment—children voluntarily choosing to play and practice; Success—verifiable academic growth dashboards. Parent conversion rates climbed from 2.16% to 2.39%.
For Teachers: Contextual field research inside elementary classrooms showed teachers had less than 60 seconds between lesson plans and needed immediate proof of curriculum alignment. School administrative firewalls blocked social sharing scripts. I changed “Email” to “School email address,” establishing professional alignment and elevating educator dashboard activations by 17%, then replaced blocked social widgets with a one-click “Copy Link” referral action.
For Students & Households: I led end-to-end product design and PO execution for the Epics Toy Storefront, connecting physical collectible figurines to digital in-game companions. Modular character artwork, stat badges, and lore cards let future waves launch dynamically without custom engineering sprints.
Connecting Household Decisions to Product Infrastructure
Cross-persona nudge loops
I designed an automated parent email triggered when a child abandoned membership checkout on a shared device. A clear breakdown of pricing tiers and academic benefits sparked a household purchase conversation, lifting parent conversions by 5% and teacher conversions by 9%.
Cross-persona nudge loops
I designed an automated parent email triggered when a child abandoned membership checkout on a shared device. A clear breakdown of pricing tiers and academic benefits sparked a household purchase conversation, lifting parent conversions by 5% and teacher conversions by 9%.
Lore-driven toy commerce
Magmischief, Arctursus, and Diveodile became more than warehouse inventory. Each collectible Epic featured backstories, element affiliations, speed/power stats, and habitat lore. The storefront extended the Prodigy universe while keeping product layouts scannable for purchasing parents.
Smart bundling & slide-out mini-cart
Dynamic volume discounts offered 15% off 2–4 toys and 25% off 5+ toys. A one-click “Add All to Cart” bundle action, persistent slide-out mini-cart, automated discount calculations, transparent tax, and “More From The Series” recommendations supported a 12% figurine sales lift.
03 / THE SOLUTION & BUSINESS IMPACT
The Solution & Business Impact
By shifting from reactive experiments to structured, multi-persona growth architecture, we transformed platform bottlenecks into high-performing conversion engines.
Feature flags
SCALABLE TESTING INFRASTRUCTURE
Successfully implemented feature flags and unlogged event tracking, fundamentally changing how the organization deployed and measured growth experiments.
+30% activation
MONETIZATION & ACTIVATION GROWTH
The optimized dual-persona flows and pricing funnels drove a 30% increase in mobile registrant activation and a 20% boost in revenue-per-visit.
+12% toy sales
E-COMMERCE CONVERSION LIFT
Overhauled the toy hub checkout process by implementing a mini cart, smart bundling capabilities, and targeted product suggestions, directly boosting physical toy sales by 12%.
100% clearance
WAREHOUSE LIQUIDATION
The lore-driven physical-to-digital unlock journey achieved 100% figurine inventory clearance while connecting retail purchases to core game engagement.
+17% Teacher dashboard activation
Institutional school-email credentialing improved activation while aligning acquisition with long-term classroom retention.
+5% Parent / +9% Teacher conversions
Automated abandoned-cart email loops connected children’s interest with adult purchasing decisions. Value-based landing page restructuring also increased parent membership conversion from 2.16% to 2.39%.
Boosted mobile registrant activation rates by 30% and pricing plan revenue-per-visit by 20%.
Increased teacher account activations by 17% via institutional credentialing form optimization.
Elevated parent membership conversions from 2.16% to 2.39% via a data-driven landing page hero restructuring.
Drove a 12% lift in toy figurine sales and achieved 100% warehouse inventory clearance through a modular, lore-driven e-commerce hub with smart bundling.
Transitioned incoming engineering squads into autonomous Scrum sprint cycles while systematically eliminating legacy technical debt.
© 2026 Ed Sanchez
Creative technology. Human-centered design.