Full redesign of a school payments app — modernised registration, rebuilt key flows, and shipped a mirrored Arabic interface. Grew users by 13% in Q1.
Kidly lets parents handle all school payments — fees, excursions, uniforms — in one app. Growing competition exposed a core problem: the UX was dated, registration was slow, and the home screen offered no real utility. The UAE market added language complexity: a significant share of users prefer Arabic, which meant designing two coherent interfaces, not one with a translation layer.
Turn a dated school-payments app into a frictionless, market-leading product.
14% of users dropped out before finishing registration. Replaced the login/password-only flow with Google, Facebook, and Apple sign-in. Google became the dominant choice, and dropout fell from 14% to 3%.
ShippedThe old home screen was a static landing page with no quick actions. Rebuilt it around user-prioritised functions — students, offers, school features — with a path to a user-customisable layout.
Shipped
Connected to the UAE school/university API to look up students directly. Eliminated duplicate entries and mismatched school assignments — a top complaint in user surveys.
ShippedShortened multi-step payment flows by up to 50% by removing redundant confirmation screens and consolidating form fields. Fewer steps, same trust signals.
Shipped
User testing confirmed demand for a personalised home screen. We designed a draggable widget flow — it tested well. But the backend architecture wasn't ready, and shipping it half-built wasn't an option.
DroppedArabic is read right-to-left — which means the entire spatial logic of the interface flips. Navigation, swipe directions, icon placement, reading order, and visual hierarchy all needed to be reconsidered, not just translated. A component that guides the eye left-to-right in English actively confuses an Arabic speaker.
We designed both versions in parallel rather than retrofitting. Every flow was validated separately with Arabic-speaking respondents from the UAE. Within the first month post-launch, 35% of active users were using the Arabic interface — confirming it as a first-class experience, not an afterthought.
Registration, home screen, and student adding were tested simultaneously. 30 UAE-based parents recruited and screened for active school payment behaviour — children aged 6–18.
Registration time — Google sign-in dominant
Found their child in API — 0 lookup failures
+13% user growth in Q1 2025 — above the 10% target. The Arabic interface captured 35% of active users within the first month. The new home screen architecture is extensible — adding features no longer requires a structural redesign. Projected 8–11% growth per quarter based on post-launch trajectory.