Girl Scouts
App
As Product Manager at R/GA, I took the Girl Scouts app from discovery through a phased pilot rollout. The brief called for a customizable 3D avatar. We delivered a broader strategy to modernize the Girl Scout experience, bringing the national program into a digital product designed to increase participation and improve retention.
| Client | Girl Scouts of the USA |
| Agency | R/GA |
| Year | 2019 – 2020 |
| Role | Product Manager |
| Scope | Discovery → UAT → Phased rollout |
| Launch | Phased pilot · Juniors · TestFlight |
| Built with | Unity · GetStream · TwoHat · Newsela |
| Phase | What I owned |
|---|---|
| 01 Discover | Ran discovery with ~20 GSUSA stakeholders and led interviews with girls, volunteers, and troop leaders. Synthesized the findings into the core pain points and set the product vision and phased roadmap with the client. |
| 02 Define | Authored the project scope and SOW, work usually owned by account leads. Wrote the PRDs and feature specs, and the user stories and acceptance criteria behind them. Scoped the MVP, prioritized the backlog, and partnered with UX on flows, wireframes, and prototypes. |
| 03 Build | Ran sprint planning, stand-ups, backlog grooming, and retros. Evaluated and selected our technology partners, owned the child-safety and privacy requirements, and led reviews and approvals with GSUSA stakeholders. Partnered weekly with finance to manage budget burn. |
| 04 Test | Wrote the test cases and led user acceptance testing with GSUSA. Managed QA and bug triage, and signed off on each build. |
| 05 Roll out | Released in phases through TestFlight: the core app to a limited group of Junior troops first, then a Phase 2 release to more troops. Defined the KPIs and owned the reporting that shaped each phase. |
I led interviews across girls, volunteers, troop leaders, and Girl Scouts staff to understand their needs and pain points, then distilled what we heard into three requirements that defined the product.
| Req | What we heard | What we built |
|---|---|---|
| R-01 | Troops lacked an organized, safe way to communicate | Troop Board |
| R-02 | Girls carried bulky binders to track activities and awards | The full award program, in the app |
| R-03 | The original brief: an avatar girls could make their own | A 3D avatar tied to earned awards |
Communication was one of the most consistent pain points we heard. The Troop Board gives girls, caregivers, and troop leaders a private, moderated space to plan meetings, share updates, and inspire one another within their own troop.
Because the audience is kids, safety drove the requirements. I evaluated messaging and moderation partners, selected GetStream for messaging and TwoHat for moderation, and defined the child-safety and privacy rules the feature had to meet.
We digitized the full national portfolio of awards, replacing the paper binder. Girls can track their progress, revisit their history, and see what their peers have earned.
Adding a badge takes seconds: point the phone’s camera at the physical patch and the app recognizes it. Badges can also be added manually, with a troop leader confirming they were earned.
The experience also gives girls ownership of their path, helping them discover and begin earning awards aligned with their own interests. A Newsela-powered content feed rounds out the app with reading tied to the program.
The avatar system, built in Unity, lets each girl design a character in her own likeness or explore something entirely new, down to blue hair.
Each sash reflects the actual awards a girl has earned, including badges added by scanning, connecting self-expression directly to progress.
I wrote the test cases and led user acceptance testing with the Girl Scouts team, ran QA and bug triage through each sprint, and signed off on builds before release.
Rather than launching all at once, we rolled out in phases through Apple’s TestFlight, which let Girl Scouts control exactly who had access. Phase 1 put the core app in the hands of a limited group of Junior troops. I defined the KPIs and owned the reporting, and those results shaped Phase 2, which added features and expanded to more troops.
| System | Built with |
|---|---|
| 3D avatar | Unity |
| Troop messaging | GetStream |
| Moderation | TwoHat |
| Content feed | Newsela |
| Badge recognition | In-app camera scanning |
| Agency + app development | R/GA |