iNGENiO Case Studies

Overview

iNGENiO Education is an online digital art platform for kids aged 5–18, built around a library of 100+ video courses. I co-founded the platform and led product design — owning UX research, information architecture, visual design, and platform implementation on WordPress, WooCommerce, and LearnDash LMS. This first case study covers the acquisition problem: how we turned casual browsers into paying members by solving choice paralysis in the Course Library.

The Problem

We were getting good traffic to the Course Library but seeing high bounce rates and low conversion. Light user feedback surveys revealed three recurring themes: parents felt overwhelmed by 100+ individual courses; they were confused by course duplicates across different drawing apps; and they couldn't quickly judge value before committing to a one-off purchase.

Users & Audience

Two primary user groups: parents (the buyers and decision-makers, evaluating value, affordability, and educational fit for their children) and kids aged 5–18 (the end-users, who needed engaging, age-appropriate content). Most purchase decisions happened during a brief, distracted browse — so the Course Library had to communicate value in seconds, not minutes.

My Role

Co-founder and Lead Designer. I owned UX research (light feedback surveys, synthesis, prioritisation), information architecture, visual design, and platform implementation. Alongside two co-founders, I shared decision-making on pricing, positioning, and product direction.

Scope & Constraints

Built on WordPress, WooCommerce, and LearnDash with no dedicated engineering team. I implemented the redesign myself, which kept iteration fast but meant every design choice had to be feasible within the existing platform. Small budget, small team, and a need to test changes quickly with real users rather than via lengthy research cycles.

Process & What I Did

• Listened first. Sent lightweight feedback surveys to existing users. Synthesised responses into three core pain points: choice paralysis, course duplication confusion, and unclear value.
• Simplified the Course Library. Redesigned course cards to be visually-led — drawing app shown at a glance, one-line description, less dense copy. Cut the visual noise so users could scan rather than read.
• Reframed the pricing model. Introduced an "All Access Pass" monthly subscription priced just above a single course, and surfaced it across multiple decision points throughout the funnel.
• Built it. Implemented the entire redesign myself on WordPress / WooCommerce / LearnDash, allowing fast iteration without engineering bottlenecks.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned

The visually-led course cards directly addressed the "Procreate vs Sketchbook" confusion parents had reported — the app-icon system meant they no longer had to decode which version of a course they were looking at. Reframing the pricing around an All Access Pass gave parents a clearer way to weigh value: instead of judging a single course in isolation, they could see unlimited access at one monthly price. And surfacing the pass at multiple points in the funnel — rather than burying it — made the subscription a visible option at the moments parents were actually deciding.

The biggest lesson: solving one bottleneck reveals the next. Once the library was easier to navigate and the pass was visible, a new problem moved to the front — the free trial itself was gated behind a credit card, suppressing sign-ups. That became Case Study 2, where the impact was clearly measurable.

Honest note: iNGENiO is an early-stage platform I co-founded. CS1's improvements were qualitative — clearer navigation, reduced confusion, a more visible value proposition. The measurable conversion shift came later, once the trial friction was removed (see Case Study 2).

How I Used AI in This Project

I used Claude (Anthropic's AI assistant) and Claude Code throughout this work: prototyping HTML/CSS variations of redesigned components in hours rather than days; pressure-testing the All Access Pass pricing model before committing build time; and accelerating WordPress / WooCommerce / LearnDash customisations.

What AI didn't do: the design decisions, the user research synthesis, or the judgement calls on what to build. My workflow treats AI as a fast junior collaborator — useful for execution speed, but always reviewed by me on anything fact-based or strategic.

Overview

After solving the acquisition problem in Case Study 1, a new bottleneck emerged: users were arriving at the site but not converting into trial users. The free trial existed — but it sat behind a credit card paywall, hidden inside the monthly subscription flow. This case study covers the activation problem: how we redesigned the trial experience to remove friction, restructured the pricing model, and turned passive visitors into daily trial sign-ups.

The Problem

A parent lands on the iNGENiO homepage, intrigued. She clicks through to start the free trial — and is immediately asked for her credit card. She closes the tab.

This was happening at scale. We had good traffic, healthy interest in the platform, but the trial conversion was almost non-existent. The free trial wasn't really a free trial — it was a subscription with a 7-day grace period. Three problems compounded each other: the landing page CTAs weren't clear about how to start a trial; the pricing page presented only two options (monthly and yearly), with the trial buried inside both; and asking for card details upfront made a "try it" decision feel like a "buy it" decision.

Users & Audience

The same two user groups as Case Study 1: parents (the buyers and decision-makers) and kids aged 5–18 (the end-users). But this case study focused almost entirely on parents at the activation moment — the brief window between "this looks interesting" and "I'm willing to try it." For most parents, that window closed the moment a credit card field appeared. Friction at this point wasn't a small inconvenience — it was a hard stop.

My Role

Co-founder and Lead Designer. I led the redesign of the landing page CTAs, restructured the pricing architecture from two tiers to three, and rebuilt the trial sign-up flow to remove the credit card gate. I worked closely with my co-founders on pricing strategy and trial duration, but owned the UX and implementation end-to-end.

Scope & Constraints

Built on WordPress, WooCommerce, and LearnDash with no dedicated engineering team. The free trial had to be technically separable from the paid subscription — which meant restructuring how WooCommerce handled the trial product, not just changing the copy on a button. As before, I implemented the changes myself, which meant every design decision had to be feasible within the existing platform stack.

Process & What I Did

• Diagnosed the drop-off. Reviewed analytics and user feedback to confirm what we suspected: the credit-card requirement was the single biggest barrier. Users were clicking "Start Free Trial" and then bouncing the moment a card field appeared.
• Rebuilt the landing page CTAs. Made "Start Free Trial" the primary, unmissable action across the site — clear, repeated, and visually distinct from "Subscribe." Removed ambiguity about how to begin.
• Restructured pricing from two tiers to three. Introduced Free Trial as a standalone first column, with Monthly and Yearly as paid options. This reframed the trial as a real product in its own right, not a feature buried inside a subscription.
• Removed every barrier to entry on the trial. No credit card. No payment details. Just an email and a password. The trial became a true low-commitment "try before you buy" experience.
• Built it. Implemented the entire flow myself on WordPress, WooCommerce, and LearnDash — including the WooCommerce restructuring needed to decouple the trial from the paid subscription.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned

Removing the credit card requirement produced an immediate, measurable shift. The redesigned trial launched on 25 March 2026. In its first full month, it generated 56 sign-ups — an average of just over two a day, landing on 24 of 30 days, where the previous trial had only ever seen sporadic, occasional interest. Across the first seven weeks, 76 parents started a free trial. The headline wasn't a single spike — it was the consistency. Sign-ups went from a rare event to a near-daily one.

The biggest lesson: the word "free" means nothing if it doesn't feel free. Asking for a credit card — even with a clearly stated 7-day grace period — broke the trust signal the trial was meant to send. Removing it cost nothing technically, but it changed user behaviour almost overnight.

A second lesson: solving activation surfaced the next bottleneck. Once parents were starting trials, a new problem appeared — many weren't engaging deeply enough during the trial to convert into paying subscribers. That became Case Study 3.

Honest note: iNGENiO is an early-stage platform I co-founded, not a scaled product with millions of users. These are real sign-up counts from a small but genuine user base — the meaningful result is the behavioural shift (sporadic → consistent daily sign-ups), not the raw scale.

How I Used AI in This Project

I used Claude and Claude Code throughout: rapidly prototyping the new three-column pricing layout in HTML/CSS before committing build time; pressure-testing the trial UX flow against common SaaS patterns; and accelerating the WooCommerce customisations needed to decouple the trial from the paid subscription product.

What AI didn't do: the decision to remove the credit card requirement, the pricing tier restructuring, or the judgement call on how to position "Free Trial" as a first-class product. My workflow treats AI as a fast junior collaborator — useful for execution speed, but always reviewed by me on anything strategic.

Overview

With acquisition (CS1) and activation (CS2) addressed, the next bottleneck was engagement. Parents were signing their kids up for the free trial — but the kids often weren't starting the lessons. This case study covers the engagement problem: how I designed a guided "start here" path to pull new users into their first lesson, what we were able (and not able) to learn from it, and the honest reality of running an experiment in an early-stage startup with limited runway.

The Problem

A parent signs their child up. The child logs in for the first time, lands on the "My Courses" page — and sees a wall of 100+ lessons with no obvious place to begin. Nothing says start here.

We'd successfully removed the friction getting in (CS2), but the logged-in experience created a new one: it was overwhelming and offered no guided entry point. For a child — especially one new to digital art, or new to the drawing apps themselves — an undifferentiated library isn't a menu of possibilities. It's a decision they don't know how to make. The page had also been built with grown-up navigation (Home, My Account) given equal prominence, even though the actual user at this moment was usually a child.

Users & Audience

This case study put the kids (ages 5–18) at the centre for the first time. CS1 and CS2 focused on parents as buyers; here, the end-user was the child who actually had to be pulled into a lesson. That shift drove the design: kids needed an interface that felt playful, not scholastic; that competed with YouTube and games for attention; and that didn't require reading dense descriptions or knowing what they wanted in advance.

A key tension shaped everything: the buyer and the user are different people with different needs. Parents want structure and educational value. Kids want fun and instant engagement. The "My Courses" page had been built for neither.

My Role

Co-founder and Lead Designer. I designed and built the guided path end-to-end: the step-by-step flow, the age and app filters, the "start here" entry points, the teaser videos per category, and the rewritten course-card microcopy. As with CS1 and CS2, I implemented it all myself on WordPress, WooCommerce, and LearnDash.

Scope & Constraints

Same platform stack and same solo-build constraint as the earlier studies. But this case study carried one constraint the others didn't, and it ended up defining the outcome: limited runway. As an early-stage startup, we needed engagement to improve, and we needed to learn quickly — but "quickly" and "thoroughly" pull in opposite directions. We didn't have the time or budget for a long, properly instrumented test cycle. That constraint is part of the story here, not a footnote.

Process & What I Did

• Designed for the real user — a child. Shrank the "grown-up" navigation (Home, My Account) to small, unobtrusive buttons, and led with a warm, playful prompt: "What shall we create today?" The page now spoke to kids, not parents.
• Built a guided, three-step path. Replaced the overwhelming library with a clear sequence — (1) How old are you? → (2) Which app do you use? → (3) Pick what you want to create. This turned an open-ended wall of choice into a few easy, confidence-building decisions.
• Added "Start Here" entry points for true beginners. For any child new to the drawing apps, a prominent "Start Here — App Intro" course removed the "but I don't know how to use this yet" barrier.
• Added teaser videos per category. Short trailers for each theme (Illustration, Landscapes, Portraiture, and so on) let kids preview a category before committing — so the choice was driven by excitement, not a text label.
• Rewrote the course cards to be playful. Swapped flat titles for energetic microcopy ("Celebrate what makes you uniquely you!") and changed CTAs from passive labels to an upbeat "Let's Go →". A small change, but it shifted the tone from schoolwork toward play.
• Built it. Designed and implemented the entire guided flow myself on the existing platform.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned

The guided path improved the first-time experience — but honestly, we never got a clean read on whether it solved the engagement problem. Early signs were modestly positive, but engagement didn't move enough to be conclusive, and we ran out of runway before we could properly test why kids weren't sticking. That's the honest result: not a clear win, not a clear failure — an experiment we didn't get to finish.

What the work did surface was a deeper, unresolved question: was the issue the design, or the audience? Parents were buying iNGENiO, but for some kids it still carried the feeling of "homework" — another structured thing an adult wanted them to do. We didn't get to fully test that hypothesis. But it's part of what's now prompting the team to explore whether iNGENiO's structured, curriculum-aligned content might be better suited to a B2B / education-focused model, where "structured and educational" is a selling point rather than a hurdle.

The biggest lesson: not every design problem gets a clean ending. Sometimes the constraint isn't the design — it's time and runway. Knowing the difference between "this didn't work" and "we didn't get to find out" is part of working honestly in an early-stage environment.

Honest note: I've kept this case study in precisely because it didn't fully resolve. Real product work in a startup often looks like this — a sound solution, an incomplete test, and a hard constraint that forces a decision before you have all the answers. How a designer handles that ambiguity says more than another tidy success story.

How I Used AI in This Project

I used Claude and Claude Code to build the guided path quickly: prototyping the three-step flow, generating and refining the playful course-card microcopy, and implementing the filtering logic and teaser-video integration on WordPress / LearnDash. The speed genuinely mattered here — with limited runway, AI let me design and ship a fairly involved redesign without a long build cycle, so we could get something in front of users rather than nothing.

What AI didn't do: the call on who the real user was, the decision about what to test, or the judgement about what the (incomplete) results meant. AI accelerated the build; the thinking, and the honest reading of an unfinished experiment, were mine.