People first, tools second.
It is easy to make an app. It is much harder to make something a classroom will use. Most of our time has gone into the second job: sitting in centres, watching, asking, and coming back.
We go to the people we are building for. We have visited special-needs centres, observed children in their routines, and sat with parents and teachers.
We ask before we assume. We have shown live demos, built features together with caregivers and educators, and treated every piece of feedback as information.
We build only what gets used, and plan for it to keep running, including after the founder leaves for college.
Three stages.
Identify the need
Conversations with parents, teachers, therapists and caregivers about what is actually hard.
Design for the long term
Building together with them, and planning who maintains it afterwards.
Learn from use
Feedback on the tools, and on what changes for the children.
50+ conversations with parents, therapists, teachers, caregivers, technology providers and social-sector consultants.
The Caregiver Dashboard was not in the original plan.
It came from what centres told us. We listened, and built something different.
The measure of success is not downloads. It is the trust we build with schools, teachers and families.