![Kindom]()
The very existence of the human race at this moment is evidence that parents over the years have done a satisfactory job at raising children without all the tools and technology available to 21st century parents. But that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement.
Gry Stene and Cath Resnick of Perth startup KinChip Systems have launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $50,000 for the development of
Kindom, a ‘parenting assistant’ app which will be able to help parents keep track of, and better assist with, their child’s development.
As well as allowing parents to store important health and school-related documentation and record milestones, the app aims to be of particular service to the parents of children who may have developmental, learning, or health issues.
Gry Stene, co-founder of Kindom, said the idea came from realising that the main thing parents want to do is make sure that their children have everything they need to be happy and reach their potential.
“Kindom is really about putting everything to do with child development in one platform and simplifying the ecosystem around child development. I've got a few people in my family that haven't had the support that they needed, so that's where we were coming from; it's about empowering kids and celebrating differences, and realising that everyone is unique,” Stene said.
While the ability to store health and school documents in one place is handy, the most interesting aspect of the app is what it does with the data parents record. On a basic level, parents are encouraged to record stats like height and weight, and daily behaviours and events to help them and others involved in a child’s development, such as doctors and teachers, more easily monitor progress. On a deeper level, the app can analyse this data to highlight patterns and identify connections between events and observations that were seemingly unrelated.
“For example, with ‘why is my 3 year old down, why has my 3 year old suddenly stopped talking?’ you can say, ‘Is it because the new baby was born? Or is it because Dad started in a new job which he's really stressed about?’ Or is there something more sinister like the autism spectrum or dyslexia or something like that. We display those sorts of trends, and allow you to look at differences that you might not think are really related, in a visual way,” Stene said.
“We'll interpret and translate data and information into something that's useful for the health or education provider, so that parents can collaborate better with them for their child's development.”
By analysing the data added by parents, the app will also be able to provide parents access to a curated knowledge base, resources and tools, and connect them with various specialists that are specific to their child’s needs.
Kindom was originally developed as a family management platform but, after a brief testing period, the startup saw that the child development aspect was what users were most interested in. They developed a new prototype, with the funds from the Indiegogo campaign to go towards developing a new user interface to make the platform as easy to use as possible.
Stene envisions the app working through a subscription model with three tiers: basic, standard, and premium. The basic level subscription provides access to Kindom Community, which provides the basic document storage and recording features, and access to tools and strategies.
The standard level membership brings Kindom Insights, which will enable parents to access the app’s basic natural language processing to identify patterns. The third tier, Kindom Decisions, uses cognitive technologies to provide personalised recommendations by drawing on data, the curated Kindom knowledge base, and other resources.
Kindom is just one of a growing number of apps in the data-driven parenting market; from Baby Connect to My Baby & Me, there’s no end to apps tracking a child’s development. While older generations may scoff and say today’s parents are needlessly paranoid that their child isn’t normal, these apps can also provide much-needed reassurance that yes, it’s normal for your toddler to be waking up at this time or be hungry this often by allowing parents to compare and contrast their data with that of other users. After all, what’s the harm in parents wanting to know that everything is going well?
Most importantly, apps like Kindom can also highlight the fact that something isn’t in fact normal and that a child needs extra or specialist help - perhaps highlighting an issue that would have taken longer to identify, or not been addressed at all, without the pattern being spotted by the app.
Apps in the market have also evolved to make the data logging easier on parents, too. California startup Kidaptive originally launched an iPad game for kids, Leo’s Pad, which tracked the cognitive development of the user. The startup then launched Learner Mosaic, an app which used the data tracked through the Leo’s Pad game to help parents come up with activities for their kids, with the difficulty of the activity related to the stage of the child’s development noted in the game.
If its crowdfunding campaign is successful, Kindom will look to fast track the development of the Kindom Community platform to have it completed by October, with Kindom Insights scheduled for completion by March, and Kindom Decisions to be ready by June next year.
