CNA
CNA GO
CNA, one of Brazil's largest English language school franchises, launched an online learning platform in 2018. The product was built by an external software factory without user research, resulting in a desktop-focused experience with poor usability, legacy system dependencies, and fragmented metrics. I joined as Design Manager to build the design function from scratch. I hired and developed a design team, integrated product, engineering, and business areas around a unified vision, and implemented a data-driven culture with OKRs and growth practices. My focus was balancing high-impact deliveries with team development and user experience evolution.
What was broken
The platform had critical issues: intermittent performance, cognitive friction, low usability, and no granular view of the user journey. Decisions were driven by legacy technical constraints rather than user needs, leading to declining engagement, retention, and increasing churn. Key challenges: creating a design culture and team where none existed, aligning product, engineering, and business to eliminate silos, defining experience metrics where no data existed, introducing clear OKRs for squads and individuals, and managing deliveries across 7 designers while promoting continuous innovation.
What we did
I built a Design Ops structure with biweekly reports, strategic squad organization, and agile management using ICE framework for data-driven prioritization. We adopted Holacracy principles with clear roles and squad autonomy, enabling faster decision-making once proper onboarding and rituals were in place. I led research initiatives through Design Sprints, mapping personas, 16 key pain points, and over 60 derived issues. I translated insights into strategy using opportunity trees, SAPS motivation models, and retention journeys with guided onboarding and micro-victories. We mapped the complete end-to-end journey for students and franchises, redesigned critical flows including onboarding, learning paths, exercises, and checkout. We unified legacy and new systems through a Design System and Illustration System, and established an experimentation culture with A/B tests across checkout, pricing, value proposition, and onboarding.
Progress & achievements
Checkout experience
Learning experience
What changed
Activity completion increased by 22%. Daily progression improved by 15%. Monthly churn dropped below 10%. Checkout conversion grew by 36% while checkout abandonment decreased by 13.6%. Team rework reduced by 25%, with designers operating autonomously through clear rituals. Product impact: CNA Go became faster, simpler, and more consistent. Business impact: continuous growth in paying students. Team impact: stronger alignment between design, product, and engineering. Key learnings: radical changes generate resistance so gradual migration works better, vanity metrics mislead so we pivoted to completion-focused metrics, integration requires constant rituals, and design systems fail without active evangelization.
Want to go deeper?
The full case study covers the research process, key metrics, and the decisions behind the design.
