Earlier this year (March 2024), we began working with Early Ideas Limited using their app TANDEM, a story creation app powered by generative AI, alongside parents and caregivers, early-years practitioners and private, public and third-sector organisations. TANDEM's goal is to give all children an equitable start in life by enabling them to experience the early interactions and strong relationships that will set them up for life. The app is designed to assist parents in creating an engaging reading experience with their child in their home.

As an innovation partner, we used the TANDEM app as a probe to understand what would be needed to create a high-quality, scalable and low-cost shared reading experience. Our working hypothesis was that this needed to be a stimulating, fun and tailored experience for low-income families with children under five to use at home and accessible for parents and caregivers across the UK. 

This is the second update detailing how we promoted shared reading experiences for families, exploring how we conducted the research and sharing what we learned from our conversations with priority families.

Following participant recruitment, we undertook our first in-depth research sessions (test-and-learn cycle one) with three parents. These sessions involved participants with children under five and focused on a 'day-in-the-life' activity to comprehensively map their family routines from morning to evening. We used a physical artefact (see Figure 1) to map out their daily routines, exploring key questions such as

• Does your child read with anyone? 
• What does ‘a day in the life’ look like with your child? 
• Where do you spend time with your child? 
• Where does technology make an appearance for you and your child? 

After a short demo of the TANDEM app, we also asked when participants could see the app fitting into their daily routines. By mapping out their responses, we gained valuable insights into their reading routines and tech usage habits when in their homes. We also captured valuable feedback on the user experience of the app and shared recommendations to the app developers to implement before we started test-and-learn cycle two. 

At the end of these sessions, we gathered baseline data on the frequency of shared reading at home, which would later be compared against the data gathered following the pilot (test-and-learn cycle three). We hoped this would give us an early signal (with low effort) as to whether TANDEM could achieve the desired impact of increasing reading frequency for our priority families.

With the updated app in hand, we then carried out the second test-and-learn cycle. Support from The Reach Foundation enabled us to expand from Edmonton into Feltham while QaResearch continued to look for additional participants in Edmonton who met our criteria. We conducted nine additional individual interviews and research sessions across both locations, repeating our 'day-in-the-life' activity. This cycle also focussed on recruiting participants for a one-month pilot study, so towards the end of each research session, we explained the requirements and expectations to participants while clarifying that this commitment was entirely optional. For parents who committed to participating in the pilot, we highlighted that they would receive a ‘thank you’ for their time. We took this approach for us to quickly gauge the ‘desirability’ of the product for parents, and reduce the chances of any incentive and social desirability-related biases.

Before the session ended, we assisted parents in installing the app on their devices and provided them with dummy accounts that were unidentifiable to the developers. We then explained how to capture and share their reading activities with their child throughout the month.

Overall, we spoke to 11 participants in-depth, each session being one hour during our first and second test-and-learn cycles. The participants’ ages were between 30-44 years old, all with children under five, living in Edmonton (Enfield) or Feltham (Hounslow).

During the first two test-and-learn cycles, we gathered a range of learning about caregivers’ preferences and motivations for their children’s use of technology, story choices and reading behaviours.

1. Helping children transition from passive digital consumption to educational tech use

Some participants expressed a desire to reduce or disrupt passive screen time and saw TANDEM as a means of introducing more educational and engaging content in a delivery format familiar to their children. Participants shared a clear need to subtly influence their child's screen time habits at home — akin to "hiding vegetables in a meal" by incorporating something more beneficial into their child’s screen time diet.

2. Engaging stories for parents and children

Many participants noted that reading the same book repeatedly can become monotonous. One mother shared, “She [her daughter] will be like, oh, it’s done now, can we read it again? We’ll read it about three times, and I’m like … it’s enough now.” She also shared that visuals provide a creative spark and enrich their shared reading experience and then went on to share how she improvises with her daughter and how this results in an enjoyable experience for them both, saying, “She [her daughter] doesn’t realise it because she can’t read words; she just looks at the picture, and the picture corresponds with what I’m saying… I make it up myself, and I feel quite smart actually afterwards.” Being able to hide the text and just show the images was an attractive offer.

3. Cultural representation in stories

Representation was an important feature for parents and their children in the reading materials. One mother shared how her child liked to identify characters that resembled family members in the stories she read to him: “We’ve got a lot of black character books, and he’ll say things like that looks like my grandad, and that looks like me … he likes to recognise himself in the books.” Additionally, when we visited community spaces in Edmonton, we noticed that some signs were translated into multiple community languages (see Figure 3). This underscores the need for children’s books to be made available in multiple languages to meet the diverse linguistic needs of the community.

4. Device usage and pre-filtering content

Most participants were reluctant to share their own devices (eg, smartphones or tablets) with their children, preferring to purchase a tablet or identify an older, unused device for them to use. A few mothers voiced concerns about their children's use of technology and online digital content, with two detailing how they carefully review/pre-filter content on platforms like YouTube Kids, ensuring their children don’t access anything overly stimulating or inappropriate. One mother shared, “If I see them watching something inappropriate, I block it, but sometimes I find that it still comes up”. We should note that the pre-filtering of content was not something that all participants who participated in this research did. In addition, a child (their child) using a device before bed was not a concern for most of the parents who participated in the research.

5. The role of libraries

Some participants said they regularly attended library events like ‘rhyme-and-play’ sessions, however borrowing books from the library was less common. Instead, many parents sourced books from older siblings’ schools, or purchased books from high street retail stores and online. One participant shared, “I haven’t signed up … So when we come to the library, we just read books here… I actually like him to come to the library … it’s a chance to get out of the house.” 

In the next update, we will share the perspectives and feedback we received from early-year experts supporting families with reading at home.