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 fourth update, exploring how we tracked family reading behaviours through the app and the effects this had for improving shared reading.

After the previous two test-and-learn cycles, 9 of the 11 participants opted to participate in a one-month pilot (test-and-learn cycle three), which we designed to track reading behaviours. Before the end of test-and learn-cycle two, we assisted parents in installing the app on their devices, providing them with ‘dummy accounts’ that were unidentifiable to the developers. This enabled more privacy for participants while allowing us to track their app usage, such as session start and end times, books generated, session length and total reading time.

We also explained to our priority parents how to capture shared reading moments during the pilot by supplying a physical diary for them to log these sessions. We asked participants to use the app as and when it felt natural to them so that we could gather a realistic understanding of their usage patterns. The diary included five pages, each representing a week from Monday to Sunday, where participants could track shared reading sessions involving both physical and digital books, noting details such as location, duration, and any barriers to reading. 

At the end of each week, we sent a prompt via text and asked participants to share a photo of their logged entries for us to monitor their activity frequently. This helped us build a picture of each family's reading behaviour on a weekly basis so that we could prepare and tailor specific questions for each parent during a 20-minute follow-up call once the pilot ended.

The TANDEM developers also implemented phone notification prompts to assess whether they would encourage participants to engage with the app at different times of the day. These notifications featured messages when users reached key milestones, such as completing the creation and reading of 1, 3, 5, and 10 stories, and completing a total of 100 pages. 

At the end of the one-month pilot, we conducted 20-minute telephone interviews with participants, asking tailored questions for each parent to help us further unpack their reading behaviours.

What we learned from the final test-and-learn cycle was that the TANDEM app:

• played a role in creating new moments of shared reading on digital devices at home for our priority families, having positive and negative outcomes
• complemented an already rich shared reading schedule for some of the families 
• disrupted children’s mindless tech time by replacing YouTube (or other digital content) viewing with story creation and shared reading on the app
• assisted some families with making the transition from no shared reading in the home to reading using the app.

Our final research opportunity was a 1 hour 15 minute ‘What if’ workshop, facilitated within Northside Youth Centre, a thriving community hub in Edmonton. We brought together four parents who had participated in the three test-and-learn cycles, the founders of the TANDEM app and key project stakeholders from Nesta. 

Together we explored three topics using prompt cards that drew inspiration from The Tarot Cards of Tech. The topics we focused on were:

1. How might TANDEM either strengthen or unintentionally disrupt the bonding experience between parents and children during shared reading?
2. What might be the potential risks that could lead to a decline in caregivers’ using the app? 
   1. We covered topics that might influence parental trust, examining factors such as data privacy, AI-generated content quality, and overall user experience.
3. What broader impact could TANDEM have if it was fully dedicated to supporting and empowering families, particularly in fostering positive tech habits and promoting educational development?

Attendees were split into two groups to ensure our priority parents were evenly distributed. After 10 minutes of discussion using prompt cards, we reconvened for each group to share their thoughts and hear diverse perspectives from the attendees.