Learn the skills to draw in your own way.
After the success of Simply Piano, Guitar and Sing, my team and I were challenged to explore a new domain: drawing. This case study follows the research and the MVP that laid the foundation for today’s Simply Draw.
Our learners draw with a real pencil on real paper. The app sits beside the sketchbook: a teacher draws along on video, a reference photo stays in view, and every course ends with a finished drawing on paper.
Marketing coordinator
Anna has always admired art and nature but never took a drawing class. She’s a busy professional looking for a structured way to learn at her own pace, on paper, while still finding her own style.
Age 25–55
Level Beginners and hobbyists
Medium Paper drawing
Motivation Learn techniques, express a personal styleI want the confidence to step outside with a sketchbook, and draw what I see in my own style.
Each one maps to a part of the experience that follows.
Past bad experiences left people doubtful. To commit, they need to trust the app can lead them to success.
Learners can’t picture what their drawing journey looks like, or see their progress along it.
Most resources teach isolated skills, not a full path to capability and independence.
Many feel insecure about their drawing, especially women, and too shy to share their work.
They want to develop a personal artistic language, not feel like they’re copying someone else.
Online courses rarely give personal feedback, so there’s no clear way to measure progress.
If Simply Draw shows beginners a clear path, gives every session a tangible result, builds confidence with feedback and earns their trust, they’ll stay motivated and keep coming back.
Onboarding gets to know each learner and starts a relationship. A few light questions shape the experience, and the tone stays calm and encouraging.
A real, lived-in drawing moment sets the tone: calm, personal and within reach.
Many people downloaded the app without a pencil and paper at hand. So the flow opens by asking learners to grab them, in a fun, upbeat way, and the first lesson starts with everything ready on the table.
The main page is where learners choose what to draw. Each course card had to feel professional and safe: introduce the teacher, show what learners will draw and which skills they’ll gain, and make them excited to start. Every detail of a card does a job.
Instead of isolated tutorials, the cards line up into one map that lays out every skill in order, with drawings that grow more complex along the way. Learners can see where they’re going before they begin.
In the MVP, a course was built around skills. Each step teaches one, like a tonal map, blending or light source, and they come together in the final drawing. Learners always know where they are, can jump to any part, and get a real moment of celebration once their drawing is finished.
The lesson player is the heart of the app. It had to feel calm and welcoming, let each learner draw at their own pace, and teach them to draw from a real reference instead of copying the teacher.
Instead of watching a concept explained on video, learners get a small game to play with it. They move the sun or the house themselves and watch the light, shadow and lines change, so lighting and perspective become something they discover, not something they’re told. A short quiz then checks what stuck, with points to earn.
Move the sun and watch the light and shadow on the tree trunk follow it.
Move the house along the horizon and its lines keep running to the vanishing point.
Answering a question makes a concept stick far better than watching it explained. Each short quiz asks learners to recall what they just learned and apply it to a real drawing. Instant feedback corrects a wrong idea on the spot, before it becomes a habit on paper, and the score, skill and level give a clear sense of progress that keeps them coming back.
The journal is where learners appreciate their progress. It becomes their digital sketchbook: they see how they’ve improved over time, treasure all their work and get excited for what’s ahead.
For the business, it grows more valuable with every drawing. Like a social media profile, it holds personal work and memories people don’t want to lose.
Our goal was product-market fit. We measured the MVP against the goals we’d set: onboarding completion, first course engagement and completion, second session retention, and how people felt about their drawings.
Main insight
Users loved the professional guidance and the step-by-step experience, but session length hurt completion and retention.
The first drawing took about 1.5 hours. People pushed to finish in one sitting and got tired, and with so many steps, each one became a convenient exit point.
Most of the people who came to the app and stayed engaged were kids, not the adults we had designed for. Far fewer adults arrived than we expected.
Parents saw it as positive screen time and were happy to support their kids’ drawing hobby.
What worked
What held people backThe MVP showed us what held learners back: long sessions, too many steps, and an audience younger than we had planned for. Only 21% completed the first course, and 17% came back for a second session. So I went back to the drawing board and simplified the lessons and the course map around one idea: get people to a finished drawing, fast, for our updated target audience: ages 7–16.
No more cards packed with text. I removed almost all text from the screen and let visuals carry the message: size, animation, movement and sound. The map is a path of the drawings learners will make, so the outcome leads.
Less focus on skills, more on small drawings that build confidence fast. Skills come in bite-sized pieces, not as a full class.
The course screen no longer lists skills. It follows one drawing as it grows, from outline to texture to shading, and each skill is learned along the way, right where it’s relevant.
In research, people kept describing personal feedback as something they need and want on their drawing journey. Without it, they were left unsure about their abilities and their progress. In the MVP, Tom answered each drawing by hand. To scale personal feedback, we invested in AI. And since our focus had shifted to kids, we turned a written note into an experience that is informative but playful and joyful.
The MVP taught us how hard it is to get people to photograph their drawing, especially midway. This animated story builds excitement about what the AI can do with that photo, so learners make the extra effort. It also gave us real evidence of how many users actually draw with the app.
After a learner photographs a finished drawing, we bring it to life with a story around it. The animation highlights the parts they practiced and learned, adding to their sense of accomplishment and delight.
We reached product‑market fit and started monetizing
Simply Draw was Simply’s first step beyond music. Research gave us a clear hypothesis, and the MVP tested it with real learners. Parents saw it as positive screen time and were happy to support their kids’ drawing hobby. Still, users, especially kids, needed a quicker sense of success and a tangible outcome to hold on to, so they would stay motivated and feel they were on the right track. Kids have less patience for a long road to success, and the simpler V2, built on smaller, quicker wins, proved to be the right mechanism for them.
