Designing for learners, payers and guardians

Many of our members are learning to use a touchscreen and an instrument at the same time. A larger-text setting helps, but on its own it simply moves the confusion to a longer page. I ask designers to remove choices rather than enlarge them: one primary action per screen, words instead of icons for payment and settings, and a predictable place for going back. We test every significant release with a standing panel of 140 members aged sixty to eighty-four, recruited through classes rather than surveys. Voice search was built after we watched members type course names with one finger and give up. China's programme encouraging age-friendly versions of common apps set useful expectations, but our own measure is narrower: whether a member can renew, cancel, find a lesson and report a problem without telephoning a relative.

Most of our accounts involve at least two people. A parent buys and manages a child's arts course; an adult child pays for a parent's membership. I design those as distinct roles rather than shared passwords. The account holder who pays completes real-name verification and sees renewal dates and charges. A learner sees lessons and their own practice. For children, a guardian controls who can see uploaded work, receives a reminder after forty minutes of continuous use and approves any purchase. China's minors' protection law and its regulations on protecting minors online set the direction; our legal colleagues interpret them, and my team turns that interpretation into defaults that a tired parent will not have to configure. The test I apply is whether each person could explain what the other can see about them.

I treat the renewal moment as part of the product rather than a billing setting. A member should know before buying what will be charged, when, and how to stop it, and whoever owns the paying account should be told before a renewal is taken. We send reminders in the app and by text message before every annual renewal, and cancellation sits on the same screen as the membership details. Introductory prices show the full price that follows in the same type size. These practices sometimes reduce conversion, and I present that cost to our chief executive directly rather than leaving it inside a test result. Consumer-protection rules in China have moved towards prominent notice before automatic renewal; I would rather design ahead of those expectations than revise a flow after complaints have defined it.

Every feature that lets members reach one another creates review work, and I want that work estimated before a feature is approved. Our design papers state the expected volume of uploads, comments or messages, the share likely to need human review and the reviewers required to keep the queue within our service level. The 118 reviewers report to operations; my team owns the rules, the reporting tools and the prioritisation that decides which items a person sees first. Children's content and reports from members over seventy are reviewed ahead of general comments. I sit with reviewers each month, because their notes reveal an ambiguous rule before complaint numbers do. A feature that the safety team cannot staff is not ready, however well it performs with members in testing.