Prodigy Game
Prodigy is a free, self-paced math game for grades 1 - 8 used by over 20 million students and teachers worldwide. The game automatically adapts for each and every child while reporting real-time information back to teachers and parents.
Product Designer
As the Lead Product Designer for the Growth Squad, my mandate was to drive user base expansion and increase recurring revenue. I led a 6-month, data-informed experimentation strategy targeting three critical business levers: Teacher Activation, Membership Conversions, and Referral Generation. By bridging the gap between qualitative user insights and quantitative A/B testing, I directed design solutions that significantly increased Prodigy's bottom line.
Optimizing membership and revenue growth
While Prodigy is highly engaging for students, our membership and referral funnels lacked the proper context to convert the actual buyers: parents and teachers.
Activation Friction
Data showed a high volume of sign-ups via personal Gmail accounts over official education emails, which historically correlated with a lower activation rate (50% vs 42%).
Conversion Disconnect
Our membership page was heavily game-centric. It failed to articulate the educational ROI and product scope required to convince parents and teachers to open their wallets.
Referral Visibility
Teachers trusted the product and were willing to share it, but our existing referral program was practically invisible and lacked a clear value proposition for educators.
Approach
To tackle these challenges, I didn't just redesign the pages, I established a robust, iterative testing framework. We scaled our insights from a baseline of 150 million registered users, targeting segments of 200k users to achieve strict statistical significance across 25 small-scale tests.
Optimizing the Membership Funnel
If we prompt teachers to use their professional email addresses, they will mentally associate Prodigy with their professional practice, leading to higher activation.
Instead of complex redesigns, I led a strategic change to the sign-up form field labels, specifically requesting school emails. This single, low-effort change effectively filtered out low-intent registrations and boosted mobile activation rates by 30%.
Driving Activation via Micro-Friction
If we prompt teachers to use their professional email addresses, they will mentally associate Prodigy with their professional practice, leading to higher activation.
Instead of complex redesigns, I led a strategic change to the sign-up form field labels, specifically requesting school emails. This single, low-effort change effectively filtered out low-intent registrations and boosted mobile activation rates by 30%.
Contextualizing the Referral Engine
I led field research, visiting an elementary school in Hamilton, Ontario, to conduct contextual inquiries and prototype testing directly in the teachers' work environment.
The field research proved that the existing referral system was structurally flawed. I directed a complete redesign of the referral architecture, aligning it with well-established e-commerce mental models to reduce cognitive load, resulting in a system that teachers instinctively understood how to use.
Impact
This 6-month initiative fundamentally shifted how Prodigy communicated its value to purchasers, proving that strategic design directly impacts revenue.
Revenue Growth
Increased the total revenue-per-visit on the pricing plan page by 20%.
Conversion Lift
Increased membership conversion rates by 5% for parents and 9% for teachers.
Activation Success
Boosted the total activation rate of mobile registrants by 30%.