The Virtual Nanny

Who are we and Who do we want to help?

My fellow students (Luuk Faber and Coen de Zeeuw) and I from the Technical University from Eindhoven, the Netherlands, participated to the hackathon in line with a course focusing on design innovation strategies. We are in an early stage of developing an application that will support working class parents (30-50 years old) with children of younger age (10-12 years old).

Context

The parents need to work from home; however, their child who normally is at elementary school (with or without special support from remedial teachers) is now also at home. This can induce the burden, stress and fatigue on parents, on top of what everybody else is experiencing during these strange times(Anffas, 2020). Children who are normally supported by professionals; such as, teachers, homework support agencies to follow a certain routine, structure and planning are now at home left to create a routine by themselves with or without the help of their parents; even though, not all parents have the skills to support their children. It is hard for a child to estimate how much time activities take and their relevance. To create structure and boundaries for parents towards their children and vise versa it is good to maintain a routine throughout the day, this will help parents to communicate expectations about the availability of their time towards the children. With time together ahead, we have to plan and make it explicit that there are activities carried out by the group, the entire family and others that are carried out individually (Autismo Sevilla, 2020). We want to focus on the age group of 10 until 12 years old; since, as Expert A says: “partly because that is the age at which pupils and students first encounter the idea that they have to make a planning. That they should have their own responsibility, and that is usually the age at which students can be made enthusiastic that they have that power at their disposal, that they can take charge themselves and that you can introduce a cooperation agreement there”. Expert B explains that it is better to start early so that children have time before they go to high school what works and does not work them.

How does our product works?

This software synchronizes with existing calendar application, as suggested by Expert A, to provide the parent and child with a clear overview of the day. The application will be a place where the parent and child can make a daily schedule, which also includes which activities will be done together. During the day the virtual nanny will help your child complete their tasks in the required time frame and rewards with the help of gamification the kid for the completed task. The parents can follow their child's progress with a parent version of this app. Expert A advises to make sure that it is clear as an adviser that his role is facilitating when he assists children, that his role is not to be anyone's mother and that you are here to help. We also want this clear distinction: the Virtual Nanny is there to facilitate, motivate and reward the children and the parental task of punishing the child remains with the parents.

Built With

• value-proposition
• xd