Gamification System Redesign for User Engagement
Brainly — Product Manager
Brainly’s original gamification system heavily rewarded only answering questions, encouraging quantity over learning depth and discouraging broader platform engagement.
The platform’s legacy gamification incentivized high-volume answerers but failed to reward genuine learning behaviors like asking questions, sustained studying, or topic mastery.
The opportunity was to fundamentally reframe gamification to support deeper user engagement, sustained retention, and meaningful learning progress, aligned with Brainly’s evolving educational mission.
- Audited the existing gamification system and identified key behavioral gaps undermining platform engagement and learning depth.
- Developed a strategic roadmap shifting focus from simple activity counting to learning journey reinforcement (personalized paths, progress streaks, topic-specific achievements).
- Proposed feature designs including dynamic daily engagement streaks, subject-based statistics, and adaptive rewards based on learning consistency, not volume alone.
- Worked with UX/UI teams to integrate motivational triggers and behavioral nudges into the core platform experience.
- Aligned stakeholders from product, education, and executive teams around the new vision for gamification evolution.
- Approved strategic shift of Brainly’s gamification system toward learning-oriented user rewards.
- Integrated new behavioral principles into future feature planning, refocusing product growth around active learners rather than passive traffic.
- Set the foundation for sustainable engagement strategies beyond transactional usage.
Braze Integration and Cross-Platform Engagement Strategy
Brainly — Product Owner
Brainly needed a robust engagement automation platform to support scalable user communication across push notifications, in-app messaging, and email — all localized and behavior-triggered across platforms.
The engagement stack was outdated, non-personalized, and inefficient to scale across Brainly’s 350M+ user base.
The opportunity was to integrate Braze and establish a modern, fully owned user engagement pipeline — covering push notifications, in-app messaging, and lifecycle automation with high segmentation precision.
- Led vendor research, evaluation, and contract negotiation, aligning stakeholders across Product, Marketing, and Legal.
- PMed the full integration across Android, iOS, and Web, managing cross-functional dependencies (backend, localization, frontend, analytics).
- Designed scalable user journeys for push and in-app, mapped to behavioral triggers across the user lifecycle (onboarding, activation, re-engagement, upsell).
- Post-integration, assumed full ownership of the Braze channel: campaign strategy, message design, testing, and performance optimization.
- Implemented A/B and multivariate testing for timing, messaging tone, and feature prompts.
- Trained internal teams on Braze usage, permissions, segmentation logic, and lifecycle program structure.
- Completed Braze integration across all platforms under time and scope constraints.
- Decreased campaign creation time by over 80%, from multi-week engineering cycles to self-service execution.
- Boosted push and in-app engagement metrics through highly targeted journeys tied to user behavior.
- Enabled market- and language-specific personalization at scale.
- Maintained full product-side ownership of the channel post-launch, aligning messaging strategy with product and monetization goals.
Strategic Vision for a Personalized, AI-Driven Learning Experience
Brainly — Marketing Strategist
Brainly needed to evolve from a high-traffic homework Q&A platform into a more engaging, indispensable learning companion.
This self-initiated vision work aimed to define what that transformation could look like through a structured, personalized, and AI-augmented study experience.
Despite its scale, Brainly’s user experience was transactional — users came for one-off answers rather than long-term study support.
The opportunity was to design a product direction that shifted from isolated queries to structured, session-based learning journeys, aligning with user behavior, retention, and educational value.
- Conducted research to map user pain points and emotional friction in the current experience.
- Analyzed competitor platforms and user motivations to uncover opportunities for differentiation.
- Designed a modular product framework centered on guided “study sessions” combining AI-generated support, user goals, and progress tracking.
- Proposed features such as dynamic content personalization, dual-model answer comparison, citation generation, paraphrasing tools, and learning analytics dashboards.
- Integrated AI into user workflows not as a gimmick, but as a tool for confidence-building, clarity, and reduced cognitive load.
- Created a phased rollout roadmap, including MVP scoping, adoption strategies, and UX principles for long-term engagement.
- Delivered a complete strategic blueprint for platform evolution, presented to internal stakeholders.
- Elevated internal discussion around long-term product direction, AI integration, and session-based learning value.
- Positioned the platform to explore deeper engagement models beyond reactive Q&A loops.
Personalized Year-End Learning Summaries for Engagement and Retention
Brainly — Product Owner
To boost engagement and reinforce Brainly’s value as a learning companion, the team developed a year-end feature that celebrated user progress and encouraged reflection and return use.
Many users viewed Brainly as a transactional tool, unaware of their cumulative learning activity.
This created an opportunity to showcase individual progress through a personalized, data-driven experience — increasing platform affinity and reactivating lapsed users.
- Designed the end-to-end experience: tracked user learning behavior, surfaced key milestones, and delivered visually engaging summaries.
- Aligned product, design, data, and engineering teams to implement logic, backend aggregation, and frontend display across Web, Android, and iOS.
- Defined event mapping and data translation from raw user activity into meaningful, emotionally resonant metrics.
- Integrated lifecycle messaging through Braze to trigger delivery via push and in-app messages.
- Managed localization and delivery timing to ensure maximum visibility during strategic year-end engagement periods.
- Launched personalized learning summaries across platforms on time for the end-of-year cycle.
- Increased engagement metrics, including session duration and reactivation among dormant users.
- Strengthened user perception of Brainly as a long-term learning tool, not just a homework utility.
- Created a reusable framework for future lifecycle campaigns and user milestone messaging.
Personal Productivity System with Gamification and Workflow Automation
Freelancer — Systems Architect
To manage ADHD-related executive function challenges and maintain sustainable productivity, I designed and implemented a modular, gamified productivity system that evolved into a fully automated behavioral tool.
Traditional productivity tools (planners, calendars, to-do apps) failed to drive consistent engagement or match fluctuating energy levels.
The opportunity was to design a self-regulating, gamified system that would make task completion intrinsically motivating — using automation to remove friction and decision fatigue.
- Designed a point-based RPG system to reward tasks based on effort, urgency, and long-term impact.
- Created task categories and streak mechanics to drive daily consistency and long-term progression.
- Automated score updates, habit tracking, and daily reset logic using Coda formulas and button-based logic.
- Developed iOS Shortcuts to push screenshots from Goodnotes directly into the system for task parsing.
- Integrated AI-assisted classification to extract tasks from notes and update the task database automatically.
- Iterated weekly challenge mechanics, status effects (energy, focus), and milestone rewards to reinforce behavior loops.
- Significantly increased consistency in task execution, especially on high-cognitive-load or ambiguous tasks.
- Reduced friction in daily planning through fully automated pipeline from notes to tasks.
- Demonstrated the ability to design closed feedback systems that drive user behavior over time.
- Built a reusable architecture for productivity gamification that mirrors user engagement frameworks in commercial products.