Epic Kids: Parent Experience R&D

Background

Epic Kids is a digital reading platform that offers a subscription service with the goal to make books accessible to all kids. With Epic Unlimited subscription, kids can access thousands of books, videos, and quizzes to fuel their curiosity and help them on their reading journey on any platform: Web, iOS, Android.

Problem

In May of 2022 Epic! kids decided that the parent experience was a critical element that’s missing from the child’s reading journey and Epic’s Ecosystem. Epic had/has a “leaky bucket problem” that’s flattening revenue growth: ~25% cancel after month 1 and ~45% cancel after the 3rd month. New customer subscription is offset by subscriber churn resulting in flat to declining growth. We needed a solution to retain our parent subscribers since they play two key roles in their kids’ reading journey on Epic:

  1. Parents can be influential in shaping their child’s engagement and enjoyment of reading.

  2. They are the ultimate decision maker on whether to keep subscription or leave.

My Role: Senior Product Designer: I did the initial Research before the PM came onboard, Survey Creation, Gathered, defined issue/pain points and solutions to create all screens for this R&D project. Additionally designed and created all the screens. Timeframe 1-month. Worked with PM to define target demographic, initial project goal and vision.

Where to start?

Historically Epic had invested heavily in Kid value but not in Parent value.

We defined parent value as —> Visible Enrichment of kids and Meeting Parent Needs.

We decided to focus on one of epic user personas: “Eager Bea”. This persona represents the largest segment of existing Epic users. ~38 % of our core total addressable market.

Defining Key Challenges to Overcome:

1. Fragmented Experiences across apps and email touch points

Current Parent Experience: Fragmented and sandwiched between email experiences. MVP Level of engagement. Not informative enough to continue action

2. Poor Parent UX

From Usability Study parent were not able to take advantage of important features that would surface parent value:

  • 49% of parents could not access the parent dashboard

  • 74% of parents could not send a book to their kid

    Note: This challenge is not fully addressed in this round but wanted to acknowledge the issue that it will be covered when making the new parent experience.

Hard to find and access Parent Dashboard: Hidden in layers and visually outweighed by profile

3. Getting Parents in the Door

In a survey of Epic Unlimited Parents:

  • 11% of parents never visited Epic

  • 10% vist once per month

  • 39% visited only a couple of times a month

    Note: This challenge is not fully addressed in this round but wanted to acknowledge the issue and address it with email marketing and other In-app solutions

Define and Target User Segment

UXR did a research study on Epic users and developed personas and market segmentation. Some were core market while other were growth market opportunities.

Here’s why Eager Bea

  1. Eager Beas represents the largest segment of existing Epic core subscribers (~38%)

  2. Epic focus on the leisure learning & Education market aligns with Eager Bea’s needs.

  3. Bridge to growth market demographic —> Average Jane. Both Eager Bea and Average Jane want to raise successful adults but Average Jane has a lower propensity to engage. Building a delightful experience for Eager Bea can invite Average Janes to the platform.

About Eager Bea

“For Eager Bea, reading is more than being “on level”—it’s a way to promote curiosity, build empathy, and become a well rounded human. They want to understand and connect with their kids. ”
— Eager Bea Parent

Eager Bea’s Parent Pain Points and Needs

Building a New Parent Experience Enable Parents To:

UXR qualitative source performed many testing, studies and surveys that boiled it down to these themes.

  • Learn: Learn about their child’s reading journey and learning on Epic (Value exposed)

  • Foster: Inspire their children to further their reading journey

  • Bond: Experience moments of connection, bonding, and insight into their kids

Product Vision:

“To help every parent engage with and foster their kid’s discovery of themselves through their joy of reading on Epic, ultimately bringing parent and child closer together”

Proposed Solution Phase 1

We explored how we might bring our product vision to life with a new cohesive Parent Dashboard with initial offering around the send book feature one part of the broader Parent Experience.

Here is why:

  • ~80 percent retention and engagement rate week over week from parents-child dyads that do use the send book feature

  • Allows for an all-inclusive experience, single touch point that’s address the fragmented experience. Parents have access in a persistent area in the app. Emails meet parents but get lost and hard to re-access

  • Parent Investment area: An area they see as their own and see the impact they have on their child

*Note Other Solutions: Asynchronous Feedback System, Discussion Maker, Quiz Template, Book Summary

Current Dashboard Solution

The current solution to surface the value to parents doesn’t dig deep enough to inform the parent of what the kids are into, give suggestions, see progress or accomplishments nor allow them to interact with the child.

The current dashboard did not give easy access to profiles, clear connection to activities, and a way to send books.

New Parent Dashboard Featuring Send Book

New Dashboard proposal around Send Book. I designed the layout and the functionality.

Widgets - Current Interests

This widget allows parent to toggle between topics and suggest a book and give an easy CTA to send it out.

Widets - Progression and Tips

This Widget would allow parents to see what happened to the book they sent and we’d enable them to talk about it with tips.

Widgets - Contextual Suggestions

Summary

This parent experience R&D Project was very well received and had great buy-in after it was presented to the CEO and upper management. It targets and addresses the “leaky bucket problem” where ~45% of subscribers were leaving after the first 3 months by engaging and involving the parent and ultimately surfacing the kid value by doing so retain them as paid subscribers.

By identifying the issues, and gaps in the current parent experience, and identifying the target demographic I was able to focus on the solution very quickly. We found that targeting the core demographic of the Eager Bea Persona (38% TAM) and addressing their needs and pain points to Learn, Foster, and Bond was the best route bridge into the grown market later with the Average Jame Persona (16% TAM).

There was a buzz around the widgets and their ability to expand and target pain point/needs of Eager Beas (38% TAM) by capitalizing on a “sticky” feature, Send Book. This feature had a high engagement value of 80% for those that use it week after week.

The team and I did not get a chance to pursue much of this design because of shifting company OKRs. It was shelved until Epic was able to get realignment with the parent company Byju on operating needs.

Note: There are additional problems to be solved such as Poor UX and getting parents in the door and we wanted to acknowledge it but not address it directly yet.