⚠️Disclaimer: visual examples available upon request.
Founder-led EdTech product where I owned strategy, discovery, delivery, and iteration end-to-end.
Defined product vision and roadmap for a podcasting platform
Led research-driven decisions to reduce educator adoption friction
Prioritized onboarding and activation over feature depth, resulting in +25% engagement
Managed cross-functional teams and external stakeholders through agile delivery
Delivered an award-winning platform adopted across European education markets
Educators, School Administrators, Student Creators
Playpod.Education (Edtech Startup - Founder)
Europe (multilingual), expanding internationally.
Founder · Product Manager · Learning Manager · Lead UX/UI Researcher & Designer
Playpod.Education is an award-winning EdTech startup I founded and led as Product Manager, and Lead UX/UI and Learning Designer. I owned the product vision, roadmap, and delivery of a multilingual podcasting platform designed for K–12 and higher education environments.
The goal was not simply to build a podcasting tool, but to enable safe, curriculum-aligned podcast creation in schools by addressing the real barriers to adoption: educator confidence, time constraints, and lack of institutional support. The platform combined a classroom-ready web app, educator onboarding through eLearning, and analytics-driven iteration. Pilot programs showed a 25% increase in engagement, validating the product direction.
Podcasting was rapidly growing in the consumer market, but educational institutions lacked the tools, training, and confidence to adopt it meaningfully in classrooms. Existing platforms were not designed for minors, assessment, or curriculum alignment, and professional development offerings were fragmented or overly technical.
Research across surveys, interviews, and pilot schools revealed that the biggest blockers were not feature gaps, but adoption friction and lack of structured guidance.
Key insights included:
70% of educators reported low confidence and limited time to adopt new technology
Schools wanted podcasting aligned to learning objectives and assessment, not just content creation
85% of parents wanted greater visibility into classroom projects and student learning
Rather than shipping a single tool, I defined an end-to-end product ecosystem that supported educators from first exposure to sustained classroom use.
The solution included:
A classroom-safe web app for recording and publishing podcasts
A self-paced eLearning course focused on pedagogical use, not just tooling
Job aids and support resources to reduce dependency on the platform
This approach intentionally prioritized activation and retention over advanced production features in early releases.
I led learner and stakeholder research through surveys, educator interviews, and focus groups across K–12 and higher education contexts. The research revealed that educators needed clarity and confidence more than customization or advanced controls.
Based on these findings, I made a strategic decision to:
Favor bite-sized onboarding over long-form training
Design for multi-device access, acknowledging fragmented educator schedules
Delay advanced features until engagement metrics validated readiness
Reduce educator onboarding friction
Increase content creation and sharing
Improve family engagement with classroom learning
Educator activation and course completion
Podcast creation and publishing frequency
Engagement metrics (UGC, sharing, session depth)
Based on research insights and early usage data, I made several intentional product tradeoffs that directly shaped adoption and engagement outcomes:
Bite-sized learning design to reduce cognitive load and increase course completion
Responsive-first delivery to support mobile and tablet usage
Community sharing features to encourage peer learning and content reuse
Analytics-driven iteration, using engagement and UGC as core success metrics
These decisions were revisited continuously through agile sprints and usability testing.
I established the visual and interaction design system for both the web app and the eLearning experience, ensuring brand consistency while adapting tone for different audiences.
One notable design iteration came from usability testing: while the public-facing product leaned into playful, family-friendly visuals, educators responded more positively to a more mature, professional aesthetic within the learning course. I adjusted the visual language accordingly, replacing some illustrated elements with real-life mentor guidance while maintaining brand coherence. Accessibility and inclusion were treated as product requirements, with WCAG-aligned patterns, multilingual UX, and age-appropriate safeguards built into the platform from the start.
For the educator course, I selected Articulate Rise 360 over more customizable tools in order to prioritize responsiveness, speed of iteration, and ease of use for long-form content. This decision aligned with research findings that favored accessibility and flexibility over deep personalization.
To support real-world classroom use, I also designed downloadable job aids including:
Step-by-step podcasting workflows
Classroom-ready checklists
Assessment rubrics and templates
These artifacts reduced friction and supported offline adoption
The platform achieved both adoption and recognition milestones:
+25% engagement in pilot programs after UX and onboarding improvements
Increased educator-generated content and classroom usage
Adoption across K–12 and higher education institutions in Europe
2× 1st Prize winner in international EdTech startup competitions
Awarded a full-tuition scholarship from Babson College for Startup & Business Management
The product was also featured in major national press outlets, including La Vanguardia, Magisnet, and multiple universities.
Here are a few national newspapers and magazines in Spanish that featured the project:
As founder and Product Manager, I led cross-functional teams of engineers, educators, and designers through agile delivery cycles. I managed roadmap prioritization, budget considerations, stakeholder communication, and external partnerships.
I also represented the product publicly, pitching to juries, investors, and institutional partners, and personally presented the project in multiple international competitions.
This project reinforced that adoption is a product problem, not a training problem. Clear success metrics, early user validation, and the discipline to defer features were critical to reducing risk and accelerating learning.
If restarting today, I would:
Validate monetization and pricing earlier
Decouple onboarding content from core tooling sooner
Introduce structured experimentation frameworks earlier in the roadmap
Leading this product as both a manager and a hands-on builder gave me a holistic, end-to-end view of how strategy, design, technology, and learning outcomes intersect. Being close to execution (while maintaining an eagle-eye perspective on goals, constraints, and tradeoffs) strengthened my ability to make faster, higher-quality product decisions. This dual perspective helped me anticipate downstream impacts, align teams around shared priorities, and balance long-term vision with practical delivery. It’s an approach I continue to apply when building and scaling complex, human-centered products.