App Showcase: Precious

What it does

Precious is a photo editing app designed for parents to celebrate and document their baby's growth. It allows users to create stylized milestone photos, monthly collages, and video slideshows. The app uses AI-powered features to automatically find photos, create themed images, and generate artistic cutouts for use in various templates.

Where it shines

Precious stands out with its highly engaging and value-driven user experience. The onboarding brilliantly demonstrates the app's potential with a dynamic preview that updates in real-time as the user sets their child's birthdate (01:04). The AI Photo Studio (04:07) is another highlight, letting users transform regular baby photos into fun, costumed portraits with just a few taps. The app also offers a surprisingly deep editing suite, where users can create cutouts and fine-tune collages with granular controls for stickers, text, and layers (05:53).

UX highlights

• Interactive Value Demonstration: The onboarding doesn't just tell, it shows. The live-updating milestone preview (01:04) is a great example of connecting user input directly to a rewarding output.
• AI-Powered Creation: The AI Photo Studio (04:09) simplifies creating elaborate themed photos. The before-and-after slider (04:41) effectively showcases the transformation.
• AI Assistant Framing: By asking users to "train" an AI assistant (01:43), the app turns a permission request into an engaging, purposeful task that also educates users on the feature.
• Reusable Assets: The app saves user-created cutouts (09:01), turning them into reusable assets that can be used across different projects, adding long-term value.
• Granular Editing Tools: For a mobile editor, the tools are quite comprehensive, offering controls for shadows, opacity, filters, and layering for both cutouts and stickers (06:27).

Monetization & growth

The app uses a hard paywall at the end of its onboarding flow (01:11). It presents a yearly plan alongside a weekly plan, with prices broken down into per-week costs to make the yearly option seem more affordable. A prominent toggle allows users to opt into a 3-day free trial, which then converts to a weekly subscription. One of the most interesting growth tactics is a direct, paid incentive for user feedback. At 04:51, the app offers users $45 to participate in a 10-minute feedback call, a powerful method for gathering deep qualitative insights.

Who it’s for

The app is clearly targeted at new parents and family members who want to create beautiful, shareable memories of a baby's first months and years. Its easy-to-use templates appeal to users who may not have advanced design skills, while the detailed editing tools cater to those who want more creative control. The emphasis on monthly milestones makes it particularly relevant for parents of newborns and toddlers.

Notes & opportunities

While powerful, the sheer number of templates and editing options could become overwhelming. Better categorization or a search function within the template libraries could improve discoverability. The initial AI training step (01:52), which shows photos of adults alongside babies, might cause some confusion about which photos to select. Clarifying the instructions on that screen could reduce hesitation.