There is something great about today’s tech world. You will find children who are barely a year old jumping into technology. They know how to use computers, iPhones, and iPads just to name a few. The prevalence and increased use of new technology have a significant impact on young children. Electronic devices with graphics and sound effects are intrinsically captivating for kids.
Today’s generation of children perceives these digital devices as their play toys. Educators and entrepreneurs are using the best of what they know about technology to engage young children. The best way to do this is by developing educational apps and software such as Kahoot that enable interactive learning. Today, there are so many great apps for kids to play with and at the same time learn something. It’s a win-win situation. Mobile apps are easy to use and fun tools that can provide young kids with numerous learning opportunities and ways to keep them motivated and engaged.
I recently had an opportunity to chat with Natalia, the founder, and CEO of InspiredKids.
ABOUT INSPIREDKIDS
The role of a father has rapidly evolved and any working father is expected to spend quality time with their children. However, they don’t have time to come up with new activities for their young ones. They also don’t have time to browse through every website for informative and inspirational parent’s blogs. All they need is to make their children happy and make them feel good about themselves. InspiredKids comes in handy to help fathers out there to be the most creative dads ever.
InspiredKids was founded by Natalia who had a passion to make the world a more sustainable, healthier and happy place. It is near impossible to feel good about yourself as a parent when you are constantly battling demanding deadlines. She realized that for every big problem there is a simple solution, thus she created a tool for herself and some of her colleagues, an idea that turned into a business.
InspiredKids was designed to help parents, especially the busy working fathers with children between the ages of 3 to 5 years to browse through several websites for age-appropriate activities for their young ones. Each day, a new video playlist comes up and you or your child selects an activity to watch. This gives you flexibility since you can only use those features needed on that day and tomorrow a new playlist is created. The app helps you to know which activity your child is playing on a daily basis and track progress.
HOW THE APP HELPS
“We all as parents want to feel good about ourselves. But with the modern lifestyle and our busy work schedules, we don’t have time or energy to be our best to create special moments of playing with our children,” says Natalia.
“Let’s take one of our customers, Tim. Tim is a successful banker who barely sees his son David. When Tim comes home from work they have less than an hour to spend together before his son’s bedtime and therefore the weekend is the only special time for the two of them. Tim doesn’t have the time and power to go through multiple websites to find age-appropriate activities and content for David that will be fun to do, educational, and support his son’s skill development.”
Natalia offers that “InspiredKids is a secret weapon for Tim to be the best father version of himself. The tool provides both Tim and David with easy and fun to do activities or games and an engaging playlist of videos. Be it on a weekday or weekend, with InspiredKids, the duo has engaging activities to do. At the end of the day, son is happy and inspired making a happy and proud father.”
WHY USE INSPIREDKIDS?
There are a number of special features for InspiredKids which makes the app to stand out among the pool of available tools. First, it focuses on reconnecting the parent and child in real life, thus, it is not a mobile game. Secondly, due to the diversity of activities, the founder adds that InspiredKids contributes to complex development of a child’s skills and knowledge including motor, speech, human values, imagination, and physical health. Lastly, it is a utility. It is a secret cheat sheet to be an awesome parent with almost no preparation.
DESIGN RESEARCH
To design an app for children, a lot of research has to happen before and after. InspiredKids is designed from user research as Natalia notes.
“During the concept and design phases, the InspiredKids team worked with a pool of parents, academia from schooling system and universities such as the University of Sheffield in the UK,” says Natalia.
User research to inform design is very critical. Startups and mobile apps have come up that only considered their outlook of the product. Without user feedback, it is impossible to create an app centered for growth.
MARKETING STRATEGIES
It is important to continually grow in the market from launch to a steady point. From using social media to content marketing, strategies to boost a startup’s growth are aplenty.
“We have been growing mostly via digital marketing,” Natalia adds.
INSPIRATION
There is no startup without a story. Natalia’s source of inspiration is a story too. Startups are created and built out of every day experiences. In fact most successful startups were initially built to solve the problems faced by the founders, and if you are facing a particular problem, chances are that you are not the only one.
Natalia narrates, “Once a family member confessed to me about losing and failing to be a father after facing conflict between his demanding career as a management consultant and his call to be a father. After I learned about this personal situation, which by far not everyone feels comfortable of speaking about in today’s society. I started to engage other people from my professional field to better articulate solutions for this problem. Because we thought if technology has improved our lives and made us efficient in our jobs, challenging the realm of possibilities. Then it should be able to provide a simple solution to reconnect us with our children in real life helping us to inspire the little ones easier than it used to be before.”
FUTURE PLANS
As we conclude our discussion, Natalia delves into the future of 2018 and beyond. “There are a number of new features we will be introducing to our customers during 2018, geared to provide a more customized experience. A few very interesting partnerships on the content side are coming up soon too.”
Download InspiredKids now.