An app to connect Australian kids to Australian culture.

ABC KIDS app was losing market share.

An aging app, fragmented experience and growing competition led to high drop-off rates as children transitioned from parent lead viewing to child lead viewing.

Despite great content existing for all ages, an outdated, childish app left older children feeling as though the app was ‘for babies’ and would leave as soon as their parents allowed.

Poor retention. Poor engagement. Broken trust.

All children develop at different rates.

Siloing content by age often prevents kids from accessing media they’re developmentally ready for. Instead, children need to lead their own viewing experience, naturally engaging with older content as they’re ready — this allows ABC to stay relevant, even as kids grow up.

Together we created an app that was;

Designed for all — Kids don’t want childish design. Cleaner UI and intuitive patterns ensured we didn’t exclude older kids, while still being simple to use for pre-language children.

Grows with you — Every child develops at a different rate. Targeting content by age is impossible. We added collections curated by early childhood experts, so kids can find what’s right for them as they develop – while still allowing parents to set limits.

More than just video — Kids don’t always want to sit and watch, so we expanded the offering to include follow-along craft tutorials and podcasts.

Together Future Friendly and ABC designed a process to safely and effectively co-design the new app with kids.

With kids it’s critical to test rather than ask, so we created and frequently iterated on a beautiful, working, fully designed prototype using the live content feeds. Giving the children the opportunity to just use rather than having to pretend.

Ultimately the solution was designed with boys, girls, ages 4 to 13, Siblings, only children, Metro, suburban, Aboriginal & Torres Strait islander, regional, ESL, and kids with a spectrum of learning disabilities. We tested with over 1000 families in total.

We delivered real change for kids, and the ABC.

For kids. An app that’s never ‘for babies’ or ‘too grown up’. A simpler way to get to the content I love and discover new things as my tastes change.

For ABC as a whole. The new app re-affirmed their position as experts in kid’s entertainment – all while improving engagement, retention, and making it easier to transition audiences to other services as they age.

For the ABC, Government funding is directly related to reach, the amount of Australian families that download and love the Kids app has a huge impact on the funding they receive and their ability to continue to provide this world class service to every Australian for free.

By almost doubling reach (+71%) we helped build the strongest possible case for further funding – ensuring this critical service can continue to connect Australian children to Australian culture.