From a High-Growth, Series A SaaS Startup to Nationwide Scale
Transforming K–12 education into a connected, secure ecosystem, Clever evolved from an integration tool into the national access platform powering 25M+ students across 90K+ schools.
When I joined Clever, it was still defining what it wanted to be, a secure sign-on bridge for K-12 students to access digital learning tools. The vision was simple: make logins frictionless, safe, and universal.
The execution was anything but simple. Schools had hundreds of different systems, inconsistent data sources, and complex permission models. Teachers were losing hours managing accounts. Students were losing access altogether.
The core problem wasn’t interface. It was system definition.
Every district introduced variability. If we designed for full flexibility, the system would collapse under its own complexity. If we over-standardized, we risked breaking real district workflows.
My role was to define the balance.
I partnered with engineering and leadership to establish a repeatable identity and onboarding model that could absorb this variability without exposing it. We prioritized a consistent core system with controlled flexibility at the edges, trading deep customization for predictability and scale.
My job was to bring clarity, to make something this complex feel invisible.
Setting the Foundation
As the founding UX lead, I partnered directly with the CTO and co-founders to design the first scalable version of Clever’s Single Sign-On (SSO) and onboarding experience.
This was not a UI problem. It was defining how identity, access, and provisioning should work across thousands of districts with incompatible systems.
The design had to scale from a classroom with 30 devices to districts with hundreds of thousands of students. That required standardizing core behaviors while allowing for differences in data structure and permissions.
I designed modular patterns for identity, onboarding, and access that could flex across district types without introducing new system states. We aligned these patterns early with FERPA compliance, treating compliance as a constraint in the system design, not a downstream requirement.
The key tradeoff was limiting edge-case flexibility in favor of a stable, repeatable model. This reduced implementation variance and made the system operable at scale.
Design Thinking in Motion
The problem presented as variability, but the underlying patterns were consistent.
Across districts, the same issues repeated: lost logins, manual syncing, and fragmented onboarding. The decision was to design for behavioral patterns, not individual implementations.
I mapped user groups, administrators, teachers, and students, and identified repeatable interaction models across them. From this, I defined a set of reusable onboarding and access patterns that could handle variable data inputs without changing the user experience.
We tested multiple onboarding models across pilot districts, balancing speed, clarity, and administrative control. The selected approach reduced login time by 60% and improved adoption by 35% in early rollouts.
This became the foundation of Clever’s design system, not as a visual layer, but as a shared interaction model across 90,000 schools.
The guiding principle was simple: the system should do the work, not the user.
Design Process & Thinking
What started as a front-end redesign quickly surfaced deeper structural issues. Navigation, permissions, and content hierarchy were inconsistent because the underlying system lacked a clear model.
We worked cross-functionally with leadership, product, and engineering to define system boundaries, user priorities, and failure points.
The key decision was to move from page-level improvements to system-level clarity.
We introduced a modular, decision-first framework that reduced unnecessary options, clarified user intent, and aligned interface behavior with system logic. This reduced cognitive load and improved task completion across roles.
This wasn’t visual refinement. It was aligning how the product behaved with how the system actually worked.
Scaling Up
As adoption grew, the challenge shifted from definition to reliability at scale.
Integrating thousands of third-party applications introduced new complexity. The decision was to move from managed onboarding to self-service configuration, enabling districts to control integrations and permissions directly.
This reduced support dependency but required stricter system rules and clearer UX to prevent misconfiguration.
I designed dynamic onboarding flows and configuration systems that allowed districts to set up and manage access independently. This reduced support volume by 30% and improved time-to-launch for new districts.
The design system evolved into a living framework, unifying dashboards, admin tools, and partner integrations. Each iteration focused on reducing friction while maintaining system integrity.
Accessibility was treated as a core requirement. I implemented WCAG 2.0 standards across components, ensuring consistent usability for a diverse student population.
Key Initiatives
Designed and launched Clever’s first scalable SSO and onboarding system, reducing login time 60% and increasing adoption 35% in pilot districts.
Defined and implemented a unified interaction model and design system across dashboards and integrations, reducing design-to-development time 45% and increasing engineering velocity.
Led the transition to self-service onboarding and configuration, reducing support tickets 30% and accelerating district activation.
Embedded accessibility standards into the system, ensuring WCAG 2.0 compliance across all core flows.
Partnered with engineering to optimize performance and data flow, improving load times 28% and maintaining reliability at national scale.
Key Results
25M+ users (students and teachers)
90K+ schools nationwide using Clever
50% of U.S. districts connected monthly
30% reduction in support tickets via self-service onboarding
60% faster login completion
Acquired by Kahoot! for $435M (2021)
These outcomes reflect system-level decisions that improved access, reliability, and adoption at scale.
The Impact
Clever redefined how schools access digital learning.
What once required manual coordination now happens in seconds. Districts moved from managing integrations to operating on top of a stable platform.
My role was to define the system that made that possible.
Every improvement reduced time spent on access and increased time spent in the classroom. That’s where design creates real value, in time, trust, and scale.
Role
Founding UX Architect & Design Lead
Partnered with the CTO, product, and engineering to architect Clever’s identity and onboarding UX, establish early design systems, and scale user access from a few districts to 25 million users nationwide.
