Archive · Kids
Streaming tablet app for kids
KIMO, a streaming app for children and their parents, taken from brief to MVP in ten days as the sole designer.
This is earlier work, kept here because people still find it. Olively today is an AI product consultancy — if that is what you are after, start with the AI Reality Check or the readiness scorecard.
The problem
What the work was actually for.
KIMO is a streaming app for children, built to an MVP as the only designer on the project. The client allocated six days; it took ten.
The interesting finding came before any design started. There are very few streaming apps for children aged 6 to 14, and almost none for over-12s. Many of the ones that exist are unreachable from European IP addresses. The gap was real, and the research was about understanding why.
The outcome
What actually changed.
An MVP delivered in ten days with a prototype the client could run usability tests against. The research is the durable part: media consumption by age, cognitive ability by age band, and screen-time health guidance, all of which outlast the visual design.
The decisions
Three calls that shaped it.
Replace the surveys with interviews
By the end of the survey phase the results lacked statistical significance and were not surfacing real pain points. Rather than present them as findings, the research was redone as recorded interviews.
Derive design principles from cognitive ability
Six to eight-year-olds have very limited motor skills, dislike scrolling and search, and cannot distinguish advertising from content. Minimum 14pt type, large targets, swipe and tap over scroll and back.
Change the mascot for gender neutrality
The first version used a unicorn for warmth. On reflection it was not neutral across a mixed child audience, so it became an astronaut bear.
What was hard
Interviews with children were deliberately not run. Ethical clearance, parental presence and the reliability of the answers all cost more time than the ten-day timeline allowed, so third-party academic research filled the gap instead.
Worth pointing at
A few decisions that held up.
The surveys were not good enough, and I said so
By the end of the survey phase it was clear the results lacked statistical significance and did not surface real pain points. Rather than present them as findings, I recorded user interviews instead and analysed those.
What parents actually fear
The affinity diagram was consistent: exposure to sexual content, addiction, and the difficulty of talking to a child about either. One father: “when your child sees it and you start talking about it, it can block your brain.”
Design principles from cognitive ability, not taste
6–8s have very limited motor skills, dislike scrolling and search, have low patience, and cannot distinguish advertising from content. Minimum 14pt type, large buttons, swipe and tap over scroll and back.
Screen time as a design constraint
UNICEF guidance is one hour a day for 2–10s and two for older children. Over six hours a day is associated with depression. A streaming app for children that ignores this is designing against its own users.
The unicorn was the wrong mascot
The first version used a unicorn for warmth and friendliness. On reflection it was not gender-neutral for a mixed child audience, so it became an astronaut bear.
The work
What it looked like.
Definitions
Three personas — the protective parent, the busy parent, and the child — plus an empathy map and a journey map.
The interface
Two mascot versions, wireframes, and the screens. The second version exists because the first was not gender-neutral.
What I do now
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