From a Million Listens to a Product Families Pay For
Qabl al Nawm is a 0-to-1 subscription bedtime app for Arabic-speaking families. I led the research and product strategy that turned a rough brief into a defined product, a shared bedtime ritual for a parent and child, then owned the design and brand through launch.
Founder and development agency
Context
Qabl al Nawm, which means 'before bedtime' in Arabic, is an original kids' bedtime story podcast told in classical Arabic, with a loyal listenership that has passed a million listens. Its founder wanted to develop an app that would house his content in a proper before-bed experience for children, and turn the trust he had earned from his listeners into subscriptions within that bedtime experience.
The founder approached me in late September 2023. This was a 0 to 1 project with no user data to draw on and a problem space that still needed discovery and definition, to be shipped as an MVP by June 2024, a date the founder set to launch ahead of the summer holidays, when bedtime routines slip and families most want help keeping them.
Challenge
The heart of the problem was a tension inside the product itself. To work as a children's app it had to feel appealing and interesting to a child, and to work as a bedtime app it had to stay calm and settling, never leaving a child alert when the whole point was to wind them down toward sleep. Those two pulls run against each other, and holding them in balance, engaging for a child yet calm for sleep, was the question every later decision had to answer. It also had to work for the parent who shares the moment, since bedtime is as much about a parent and child bonding as about sleep. And beyond that, the experience had to give families enough value that they would choose to pay for it.
Research
Co-listening
children listen with a parent rather than alone (80%).
Device used
usage happens on a phone rather than a tablet (89%).
Established habits
bedtime is already part of a routine (75% listen before bed, 82% already had a routine).
Awareness gap
over a third of parents doubted their kids understood why sleep matters, a conservative signal pointing to a deeper gap around sleep health.
Core design principles
From this research I set the guardrails I'd design against:
Don't overstimulate
Where kids' apps add colour, motion, and detail to hold attention, this one strips them back, so it quiets the senses rather than rousing them.
Design for fatigue
Prioritise legibility and effortless navigation for tired parents at the end of the day.
Suggest, don't render
Hint at a story's world rather than fully illustrate it, so a child's imagination does the work as their eyes close.
Design for two, not one
The parent shares the moment, so every decision serves their role, not only the child's.
Shaping the product
Design solution
A calm visual browse
Content lives in three calm, low-stimulation sections, stories, lullabies, and ambience. Stories and lullabies share the paper-cut world, while ambient sounds use simpler icons, so the two content types stay legible at a glance, especially in Favourites where they mix.
A player built for eyes closing
Stripped back to what matters at bedtime, and built for a parent operating in the dark with a child who might interrupt.
The Child account profile
The child profile is where the product's warmth lives, a personal kids space, the narrator's voice messages about the stories, and a gentle push toward better sleep.
A separate parent profile
The parent content sits behind a two-profile split, kept apart so it never dilutes the child experience. Parents still needed an easy way to switch across to it, and testing settled where that switch went.
A soft paywall
Rather than a hard wall at launch, the subscription is a soft paywall woven into browsing. Families explore with free content, feeling the value and building trust before any ask.
Arabic first, localised to English
The app is Arabic at its core, its audience, its classical-Arabic stories, and a right-to-left interface. English is a localised layer added for families who navigate more easily in English, while the audio stays Arabic throughout.
Impact
Success came down to the fundamentals: adoption, engagement, conversion, and retention. Two years after launch, all four have held.
58K
Organic downloads across iOS and Android, with no paid marketing.
4.5%
Download-to-paid within 35 days, more than double the 2.1% average for freemium apps (RevenueCat, 2026).
70%
Of subscribers still paying after their first month, a strong hold for a subscription product.
3×
Monthly recurring revenue, from year one to year two.
It holds 4.8 on the App Store and 4.2 on Google Play across about 200 reviews, and it effectively met the founder's own first goals for reach and paying subscribers, in a niche Arabic-language category.
Reflection
Two years of data settled the debate over the adult section: the one part of the product that strayed from its core is the one part nobody uses, and it is now being sunset. Because I had contained it behind the profile split rather than building it in, removing it disturbed nothing. The lesson I take from the whole project is that protecting the core, and resisting the constant pull to add more, is what kept the product doing its one job well.
The clearest next step is already in motion: as the library grew, families began asking for category-based browsing, the labelling I'd flagged at launch, so I'm now designing the filtering and search built on it. I'm also exploring how to deepen the bond during the story itself, perhaps gentle prompts a parent could use to talk with their child, but only if it can enrich the moment without pulling the child back toward alert.