PlayIsTheWork.com

As you know I don’t blog very much about our company Braincandy except when I think it’s relevant to the discussion about balancing parenting, education and the tools we use to help our children learn. As we approach our launch on October 16^th with Borders and Amazon, I had the rare opportunity of doing “focus groups” in New York with our newest products and hearing what moms and dads of young children thought about what we are doing. I thought I’d share some of those insights and also to ask you for feedback (especially if you are a Braincandy viewer) and insights. 

We listened to two groups over the span of about 4 hours all from the NY metro area. It was a total of 16 people—moms and dads combined all with children between the ages of 0 and 4. Mainly what we were looking for was information about how people use our products and whether what we believe we’re trying to achieve with our products is actually working. A few key insights bubbled to the top.   

1. The “5 Senses” platform really resonated with people. They saw using the 5 Senses to learn as being unique to the market of children’s media and a great content area to explore. 
     

2. They liked the “organic” approach we take with Braincandy. We don’t use toys or devices like flashcards to teach kids. We invite children into a world inhabited by other children and fun characters. This gives kids ideas to mimic what they see on the screen and learn through play and exploration. 
     

3. The parents all thought the puppet characters were weird. When probed on this question, they also all admitted that kids like weird and that their children were no exception. I think what we learned from this is that what we like or are engaged by, isn’t always what gets 2 or 3 year olds excited. 
     

4. Passive vs. Active. This was something that was really interesting. Every parent said that they used videos to “calm” babies at times and put them to sleep but loved the idea that Braincandy was an alternative to that kind of content. They liked the idea that kids were doing what they saw on the screen and saw the direct relationship. 
     

5. Lastly, and most interestingly, the parents saw Braincandy as an educational tool much closer to a book than a video. They believed the nature of the interaction of parent and child while watching the videos was instructive in the way that reading a book to a child is. What we love about this is that it stimulates a parent to have a dialogue with young kids about what they’re seeing and gets parents actively involved in a child’s world of play. 
     

One topic that was hotly debated was whether our target age of 6 months to 4 years was appropriate. Some thought the content skewed older and some thought it was for younger kids. If you have an opinion, we’d love to hear it. 

In the meantime, have a great Braincandy kid day! 

Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Sam
Filed under: Uncategorized