Shaping cyber security learning for 7M users

TryHackMe teaches cybersecurity through hands-on labs. At seven million users, the platform was leaking at almost every stage: activation was weak, learners were dropping off mid-room, and the gamification was surface-level rather than structural. I joined as lead product designer across multiple squads over a period of 12 months.

RoleLead Product Designer

ScopeActivation · Learning experience · Engagement

My ownershipProduct and design strategy · Experiment concepts · Interaction design · Prototyping · Validation · Design direction

Worked withProduct · Engineering · Data · Content

Gamified learning path: the visual journey, character animation, room states and icon library across learning topics.

Gamification

Building the path people actually want to follow.

Moving TryHackMe from a catalogue of rooms to a genuinely gamified journey required three things: a visual path, a character learners could attach to, and rewards that felt earned. I pushed for a mascot-led system because the path needed an emotional anchor, drawing on what Duolingo gets right about habit, encouragement and return visits. The strongest direction shipped to every learner, supported by a complete room-state system and icon library across every learning topic.

Fast small failures gave the team the confidence to make the structural changes that actually moved the numbers.

Activation

Getting the right learner to the right start.

Different learner types arrived with completely different goals, but one generic onboarding served them all. I designed an AI-assisted segmentation flow: a conversational enrol path that reads intent and routes each person to the right first session, then maps the week and month ahead. Sign-ups became learners who came back for the next room.

Personalised learning journey: today's session, this week, this month and the long-term goal mapped to each segment.

Learning experience and engagement

Fixing how the platform teaches. Then keeping people coming back.

Learners were dropping off at task two and three, not because the content was too hard, but because the room gave no sense of progress. I redesigned numerous room experiences to make momentum visible, exploring ideas like task pagination that give a clear signal at every step.

What we learnedLearners were disproportionately dropping during the second and third tasks, not at the start of a room.

The betMaking progress explicit would create enough perceived momentum to reduce abandonment.

What I testedDifferent task structures and progress treatments, including pagination and clearer completion states.

What changedThe strongest interaction was folded into the room experience and shaped the wider engagement work.

A hands-on lab task with numbered pagination across the top, giving learners a clear progress signal at every step.

Once learners could see their progress inside a room, the next question was how to earn the return visit. Missions turned progress into a weekly loop: clear goals, visible rewards, and a character that celebrates the moment momentum starts to build.

The missions system: weekly missions, rewards and a character that celebrates progress to earn the return visit.

Outcomes

Shipped. Measured. Repeated.

10.6%

Increase in early repeat learning, learners completing two rooms within seven days, from a mobile activation experiment.

Users reached. The redesigned learning path shipped across the whole TryHackMe platform.

HypothesisMoving mobile learners onto desktop earlier would increase deeper learning.

ResultDesktop login within seven days came in about 7% below control, and deeper progression (four rooms in seven days) stayed flat.

DecisionDon't force the platform shift. Move the intervention to moments where desktop clearly adds value. The evidence to stop is as useful as the evidence to scale.

More work

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A few quicker wins

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