As my third and final post on the kids app market, I have made a wish list. What if things were different? How could the market improve?
Even if all of my wishes were to come true, the majority of the market complexities would remain. Your user is not your customer. That won’t ever change. But as I’ve stated before – things can still improve. All parts of the ecosystem can do better.
This wish list is my way of contributing to these improvements. I want to show that there are many things that could be reworked, changed, or improved. I sometimes get the feeling that people look at this market as stagnant – almost impossible. With this wishlist I’m simply saying: it doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s make some changes!
If you missed the first two parts, take a look here first for some more context:
Part 1: The Kids App Market – A Strategic Overview
Part 2: The Kids App Market: Q&A
Product & Developers
- There’s more to kids apps than ABCs and 123s
One of the reasons it is hard to find great apps is that so many of them are going for the exact same concept. With the same sort of developer name. With the same sort of art style. Everything looks and feels the same, and it creates the impression of a non-differentiated market.
I wish developers would take it a step or two further. Yes, ABCs are important. But that app concept is pretty well covered by now. There’s so much more to be done. - Define your authorship
Go beyond the most immediate common denominator when it comes to design. Look at children’s books for inspiration – Jon Klassen or Chris Haughton for example. They have a tone of voice, a look, a sense of authorship. This is far too often missing from kids apps. - Where is the Pixar of apps?
By saying Pixar, I don’t necessarily mean that exact studio (although that would have been lovely too). But where are the studios that have that amount of care and attention to detail? The app studios that love their craft like Pixar loves movies? I understand the financial reality of developing for this space – I really do. But ambition is free. And I rarely even see an experiment with a sense of curiosity or adventurousness. It would reinvigorate the market in a way that is needed to get the excitement back. - Don’t forget the parents
There’s more to this ecosystem than just apps for kids. Apps for parents live in their own ecosystem currently, but there’s a lot of overlap here in terms of communication and discovery. There’s loads of room for innovation in this area.
Platforms & App Stores
- Delay App Store charges by 24h
I’ve spoken to countless parents that bought an app (or an IAP) that ended up being bad or disappointing. This had discouraged them from buying other apps in general. This is a huge problem, but an understandable situation.
To me, there’s a very simple change that would increase product quality across the App Store overnight: move the credit card charge 24h forwards in time. Ask the consumer one day later if they’d like to keep the purchase they made, and if not the charge (and purchase) is reverted. What’s more – the ranking in the store should only kick in based on the purchases kept, which instantly rewards quality and longevity. Finally – let bought in-app purchases be shared across all family devices. - Checkbox for kids search
Identify the searches that are clearly intended for kids and add a checkbox to filter out all results that aren’t in the Kids category. If you want to show up in search, comply with the rules of the kids category (more on that below). - Clean up the store
Screen out the garbage that is cluttering up the search results. Plenty of apps aren’t accepted anyway. It is long overdue to make that list considerably longer. We don’t need more apps like Baby Vampire-dentist office ultimate game for kids. Start by enforcing your own guidelines. These apps are predatory and make the store look bad. Turn them off. - Encourage inclusion in the Kids category
During WWDC this year, Apple announced that they would ban all use of analytics for apps in the Kids category. And while I can understand the intent, this sends the wrong message to the developer community. The Kids category already has more strict requirements than the rest, and several kids developers simply avoid the category and rely on discovery outside it instead. This change penalizes the developers that are trying to comply with best practices and leaves the blatant category misuse from certain developers to continue.
In my opinion, Apple should be doing the opposite. They should be strongly incentivizing developers to join the Kids category (and by doing so, comply with a higher standard of regulation – which is a good thing).
In the context of the App Store, incentives mean promotion. Make a Kids tab in the store. Stop promoting any kids directed app that isn’t in the Kids category. Remove apps from kids directed search (as per above). There’s lots to do here to make the Kids category safer for families and better for developers. - Follow a developer
Developers don’t have any way of contacting their former customers in the App Store today. It relies on parents signing up for a mailing list or a social media account and then catch that message when the time comes. There are a lot of steps that can go wrong there. At the same time, consumers don’t want to be spammed from every developer that they ever downloaded an app from.
A solution could be to let consumers follow a developer in the App Store. That way they could voluntarily get notified when developers of their choice released new products, and receive it as a push notification from the App Store. This would encourage loyalty and help with discovery of new products. - Incentivize referrals
Apple had an affiliate program that they removed recently. Given how difficult discovery in this category is, they should incentivize outside ecosystems to help with this. Finding quality products will lead to more spending since the experience is better. Sharing this spending with the broader community that helps with the discovery seems very fair and reasonable to me. If there has been issues around fraud in certain categories, only turn this on for the Kids category to begin with.
Parents
- Parents, please pay
This is simple and perhaps naive, but this is a wish list after all. Please pay for apps. One way or another. Generally, I’m not a big fan of industries complaining that their customers don’t understand their own greatness. But this is an industry that needs support in order to become self-sustaining. And if you want your favorite developers to keep producing great apps for kids, then my wish would be that they got financially supported to a higher extent than today. - Take an informed view of screen time
This is a long and complicated topic that I won’t get into here. The jury is also still out on many issues as we wait for the research to come in. But until then, take a look at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations. And while I don’t agree with everything there, their view on quality over quantity provides a useful lens to have when determining how you want technology to be used in your family. This shouldn’t be a binary matter.
Media
- Treat apps like culture
I wish we would stop thinking about apps as software and start treating them as a part of culture instead. Or as a part of media at the very least. Technology is only the carrier – not the category. When apps are seen as small pieces of tech hidden away in the back section of magazines, so much of the potential is lost. I’m not saying all apps deserve to be on the cover of Time Magazine. But looking at them as a part of a broader culture would encourage more developers – and not only kids ditto – to aim higher. - Where are Oprah & Ellen?
This space needs a cultural icon that points people to good things. Like Oprah and Ellen do. They carry massive influence, are trusted in their spaces, and help guide people to great products. Kids apps really needs their own Oprah and Ellen.
Regulation & Privacy
- Clarity
In my experience, most kids app developers have the best of intentions. There are easier ways of making money than this, so the immediate gold rush tends to go in other directions. Nevertheless, all of them get tangled up in the regulation that guides this space. Developers are treading on eggshells to not break a law – by mistake.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The developer community just needs clarity in regulation. I’m all for safe harbor programs, but you shouldn’t need one to comply with regulation. I’m not advocating watering the law down – I just want it to be crystal clear when you are compliant and not. - Neutral, private, authentication
Account and data management are often needed to create a great experience. It is also the beginning of a privacy nightmare – for everyone. The kids space would benefit from a neutral, private, cross-platform, COPPA/GDPR-K compliant way of handling identity, authentication, and data management. That way developers could use this and therefore not have to solve these issues individually. Quick for the developers, simple for the user, transparent for the parents.
That was my wish list. Please add your own in the comments!
Please consider signing up to my very occasional newsletter that includes recommendations and articles like the one you just read. Click here to do that in a GDPR compliant manner.
Pingback: Designing with asymmetry: Enabling people to share an experience in different ways – Björn Jeffery