Designing an audio course experience that gives parents a reason to keep coming back.
Project overview
iHuman (洪恩) makes educational apps for children aged 3 to 8. In 2021, the company started an internal exploration: a companion app for the parents behind those children.
As the product designer, I worked from research synthesis to a hi-fi prototype of the app’s audio courses, and ideated five ways to help parents actually finish them.
01. Context
Every iHuman product was built for children, but parents are the ones who download, pay and decide when to stop. iHuman’s senior management wanted to explore a product made for parents, one that could strengthen that relationship and reduce churn across iHuman’s apps.
The open question was simple: if iHuman built something for parents, what would they actually want from it?
02. Research
The user research team surveyed existing iHuman parents and received 222 responses. Most respondents were mothers, and most of their children were between 3 and 5.
Two questions shaped the product direction.
Multiple choice, n = 222
Multiple choice, n = 222
In both questions, advice ranked above reporting. Parents wanted answers to the problems they meet while raising their child (65.3%) and suggestions to improve learning (72.1%) more than they wanted reports (38.3%) or raw data (52.3%).
Primary user
Pain points
03. Defining V1
V1 focused on the two things parents asked for most:
I owned the audio course experience, which raised one question:
How might we help busy parents finish an audio course, and come back for the next one?
Content plan
V1 content was organized around the child’s age rather than by topic, so a parent only sees what fits their child’s current stage. In total: 28 plans, roughly 80 to 120 audio episodes and 28 videos, most of them produced with partners.
| Age | Sensitive period | Plans | Topics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3–4 | Preschool adjustment | 4 | Language (2) · Getting ready for kindergarten · Parents’ relationship |
| 4–5 | Interest discovery | 9 | Interests (3) · Subjects (3) · Emotions · Peers · Child psychology |
| 5–6 | School readiness | 3 | Reading · Learning attitude · Kindergarten to primary school |
| 6–7 | School adjustment | 4 | General skills · Study habits · Daily routines |
| 7–8 | Habit building | 3 | Study methods · Self-management · School performance |
| All ages | General | 5 | Health (3) · Safety · Medical care |
04. Ideation & design
A course only helps if parents finish it. I looked at how other apps keep people coming back, from livestream shopping to finance and audiobook apps, and sketched five ideas to encourage parents to keep listening.
01 · Before a plan
When new plans are coming, a reminder appears on the home screen. Upcoming plans look like regular ones, greyed out, with a release date on top and a reserve button below that shows how many parents have reserved.
Why: build anticipation and social proof before a plan starts.
02 · Me tab
A report card sums up the year (“13 plans completed, ahead of 24% of parents”). Below it, two feeds show what parents you follow are listening to, and the most popular plans, each with a comment from another parent.
Why: visible progress and peers as motivation.
03 · Inside a plan
Each episode ends with one short question. Answering it correctly unlocks the next episode; a wrong answer points back to the moment in the audio that explains it.
Why: active recall helps advice stick, and progress feels earned.
04 · Inside a plan
One tap switches a plan from audio to text. Each episode shows a short preview that expands into the full text, so parents can read when they can’t play sound.
Why: meet parents where they are, not only when they can listen.
05 · After each episode
Finishing an episode gives a tip card: the key points in a sentence or two, plus one thing to try today. Parents save the cards they like into My tip cards, a personal summary of the course.
Why: advice only helps once it’s used in daily life.
Reviewing the five ideas with the team, we asked one question of each: does it work on day one of V1? Only one survived, as a merge of two ideas.
V1 launched with an initial set of plans. Which plans came next would depend on what parents actually listened to, so there was nothing reliable to preview yet.
A brand-new app has almost no listening data. A report card and a “most popular” feed built on so little would feel empty, so we left them until the data grows.
A quiz after every episode would put too much pressure on parents who are already short on time. We kept what the quiz was for, reflecting on what was just learned, and moved it into the tip card: after each task, parents get a tip or a small thing to try, and can save it.
V1 was a bet on audio. Listening is low effort and fits anywhere, on the commute or while cooking, while reading asks more of parents, and many are reluctant to do it. A reading mode would pull against that direction.
The social idea behind 01 and 02 still made it in, in a lighter form that doesn’t need much data: every plan shows how many parents are learning it, comments are featured on the home screen, and parents can ask official advisors questions right under each episode.
05. Prototype
The hi-fi prototype covers the full loop: find a course, join it, listen to the free task, unlock the rest, open a tip card, then ask a question and get an answer. Try it below, or open it in a new tab to jump between screens.
Open the prototype06. What happened next
I left iHuman at the end of August 2021, and the parent app did not launch. If it had, these are the signals I would track.
| Metric | What it measures | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Plan completion rate | Whether parents finish what they start | The core goal behind all five ideas. If completion stays low, the content or its length needs rethinking before adding more mechanics. |
| Free task to unlock rate | Value of the free first task | Shows whether trying one task convinces parents the rest is worth it. |
| Tip card opens and saves | Appeal of the reward | Saved cards suggest the takeaways are useful outside the app, not only a badge. |
| Return visits from answers | Pull of expert Q&A | Answers are designed to bring parents back. This shows whether they do. |
| Children’s app retention | The original business goal | Compare churn in iHuman’s children’s apps between families who use the parent app and those who don’t. |
07. Reflection
Much of V1 was content work: mapping 28 plans to five developmental stages and deciding what a parent should see first. It showed me that in a content product, designing the structure matters as much as designing the screens.
Each of the five ideas is a different way to help parents finish a course. Looking back, I would test which ones actually drive completion before adding more. Unlocks and rewards can easily feel like pressure to parents who are already short on time.
Leaving before launch also meant I never saw real usage. Since then, I write down the success metrics while I design, so the next person can tell whether a decision worked.