A wearable for kids

At launch, Littlebird was the smallest cellular-enabled wearable for toddlers on the market. Our task was to help define the features of a companion app, which lets parents check in on their child’s location, activity, and health metrics at a glance. The result was an app experience that helps parents feel connected to their children, even while they’re away.

empowered care circle

Based on insights from our discovery research with parents and caregivers, we defined features that put peace of mind at the forefront: easy hardware pairing, seamless handoffs and caregiver management, glanceable health data digests.

Custody and location tracking features help parents identify when handoffs occur, and a digital ‘tether’ alerts those with little explorers when their child wanders. All updates are saved to a central timeline.

Metrics: parsing complexity

To explore how the app might track temperature, heart rate, steps, and sleep, we designed each detail screen to offer contextual filters for understanding metrics over time.

Wilcdard: moods

We designed the app to not only surface biometric data, but to encourage qualitative updates from caregivers, like a child’s mood. But how does one visualize a mood? Is it a point on a spectrum? An emoji on a graph? A word in a word cloud? Below are some of our experiments in capturing and tracking moods.

The handoff tradeoff

We developed a handoff feature to remove the guesswork from changing caregivers. Ample affordances help parents and caregivers confirm a successful transfer of care, ensuring a higher degree of trust. This meant foregoing a flashy gesture in favor of a confirmation request. The result was less potential for confusion or accidental handoffs.

The digital Tether

In-app banners and push notifications alert caregivers and parents alike of their child’s whereabouts, removing the stressful guesswork from zoo and grocery outings.

the nitty gritty: led pairing states

Users needed to understand how to pair their wristband device to the app. We specified and prototyped LED pairing states, which we vetted and refined with our engineering team.

Visual design refresh

Together with the client and our internal brand team, we refined the look and feel of the existing app to be playful yet reassuring. Care and health updates needed to be easy to spot, and data easy to parse at a glance.

key experiences

• Collaboration with product engineers to define Bluetooth + LTE connectivity scenarios

• QA with Littlebird’s development team to bug check the app