In the UK, families waiting for a developmental assessment wait months. Dododo offered a different route: take a screening now, get a personalised activity plan for your child, and ask a specialist questions along the way. Children aged 2–8, mainly autism and ADHD.
We had tested physical activity boxes earlier. They were the obvious product, and we set them aside to build the digital one.

What parents asked for, and what they actually needed
Every parent told us the same thing: I don't know what to do. So we built exactly that — screening, a tailored plan, expert access.
The problem didn't go away.
Parents now knew what to do and still didn't do it. The barrier was never knowledge. It was starting: fitting activities into an already full day, judging whether this was a good moment, and not knowing whether they were reacting to their child correctly. Some sent us question after question. Others went quiet and did nothing at all.
The thresholds we set before we started
Before the pilot we agreed on two conditions. At least 10% of families reaching the end of the six weeks. At least 10% saying they would pay to continue. If either held, the activity plans were the right core product and we would keep investing in content.
Neither held. Most families dropped off from week three — while interviews with parents and occupational therapists stayed warm and positive throughout. Behaviour disagreed with what people told us, and behaviour won.
Where the engagement actually was
Not in the exercises. In the parent module — short pieces on how to begin, how to build activities into an ordinary day, and how to read whether your child is ready for something new right now. That last piece, which parents came to call the traffic light, was the one they returned to.
So we rebuilt around the parent rather than the plan: confidence, timing and support, instead of more content.
"The most important thing for me was the parent module — I realised how much I need to pay attention to my own resource. The traffic-light system helped too."
— pilot parent

For the MVP we deliberately kept the interface minimal, focusing on the core loop: assessment → plan → activities. We chose a web app over a native app for flexibility and speed of iteration — critical for a two-person product team learning from real families in real time.

Our research covered the UK, Europe, the US, and Latin America — and revealed real differences in how families approach developmental concerns and how much support systems offer them. Designing for this audience means designing for someone under stress: the tone, the pacing, and how results are communicated matter as much as the features.

Giving someone the right answer isn't the same as getting them to act on it. Correctness is the easy half — the hard half is whether anyone acts. It's the same problem in any decision-support product.