Shahriar Sultan

EdTech Mobile App Design — UX Case Study

I led design for Niyyah, an Islamic learning app and Quran coach. V1 shipped to the App Store in one month. Day-1 retention held at 63%.

Client

Niyyah

Industry

Consumer Mobile · EdTech

Role

Head of Design

Timeline

1 month V1 · ongoing

Live

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The Challenge

Most Islamic learning apps are catalogues. Users open them, scroll, and close them. Niyyah needed to be a daily habit. Credible enough for a religious product. Casual enough to open before coffee.

The Solution

I designed a coach, not a catalogue. Every screen pushes one tap forward — one topic, one verse, one minute of practice. Scholar-backed, source-visible, no scrolling.

1 month

Kickoff to App Store

V1 shipped end-to-end as Head of Design

63%

Day-1 retention

held in beta and post-launch

69%

Onboarding completion

first session, beta cohort

01

The Approach

I joined as Head of Design and embedded with the founder full time. Daily sync. Weekly engineering review.

The first two weeks were listening. I tried every Quran app on the store. Talked to users. The same pattern showed up everywhere — too much content, no push, no reason to come back.

Then I picked the spine. The Coach. A chat surface where a real question gets a scholar's answer. Build that right and the rest of the app could orbit it.

02

Key Decisions

01 / 04

The Coach is a chat surface. A real question gets a scholar's answer, with the verse it traces from sitting right beside it. Tone was the design problem, not layout. Too formal and it reads like a textbook. Too casual and it loses trust. I landed on plain language with sources next to the answer.

Sources live next to the answer. Not behind a button.

02 / 04

The Quran screen serves two readers. Arabic-first, with translation in peripheral vision. Translation-first, with Arabic for reference. One layout. No toggle. Fifteen versions before both felt native on a commute.

One screen. Two readers. Nothing to switch.

03 / 04

Explore is where the catalogue impulse fought hardest. Every app I'd seen surfaced lists of lectures by length. Every list drowned the new user. I replaced lists with topic cards sized to one sitting. The next-best topic always sits at the bottom of the current one.

Topics, not lectures. One sitting, one tap forward.

04 / 04

The paywall had to convert without feeling at odds with a religious product. I tried hard gates, soft gates, trust-led layouts. The shipped version is three value lines, then the price, then the alternatives. No countdown timers. No urgency tricks.

Trust converts better than scarcity in this category.

03

The Outcome

Ramadan — the catalogue's busiest moment of the year. Same Topic primitive, dressed for the season.

What this means

Pick whether you're a catalogue or a coach. Catalogues let users browse. Coaches push them through. Most apps in this category never make that choice — and the retention curves show it.

  • Add streak rewards that survive a missed day. Long-term habits don't break on a single skip.
  • Push the Coach voice into Arabic. Right now it leans English.
  • Test a quiet community layer. Not a feed — a small circle of accountability partners.
  • Top Rated on Upwork
  • 100% Job Success
  • $80K+ earned
  • 8+ years

Open to senior remote roles.

Full-time employment or long-term contract. Senior Product Designer or Senior UX Designer. Reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

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Or email hey@shahriarsultan.com

EdTech Mobile App Design — UX Case Study — I led design for Niyyah, an Islamic learning app and Quran coach. V1 shipped to the App Store in one month. Day-1 retention held at 63%.