My First Five Years
A new edtech app to help parents marvel in the moments, not just the milestones
Taking 50 years of child development research mobile
My First Five Years is on a mission to change the face of parenting.
The start-up was founded on a simple but powerful premise: that the science of early childhood development should not be locked away in academic papers or available only to specialists. It should be in the hands of every parent, carer and educator, in a form they can actually use.
The challenge Apadmi was brought in to solve was as much about product thinking as it was about engineering. How do you take 2,600 skills and activities, grounded in 50 years of child development science, and present them to a sleep-deprived parent with a toddler on one hip. How do you do this intuitively, without dumbing anything down, and in a way that feels personal to their child rather than generic?
The answer was an app built around individual recommendations rather than age-based generalisations. Every child develops differently, and My First Five Years was designed to reflect that, with Apadmi building the platform in a way that makes this possible.
Solving a complex content problem
The content challenge at the heart of My First Five Years was significant. The app needed to hold thousands of data points about child development, understand a specific child’s profile and progress, and surface the right insight at the right moment. The experience needed to avoid overwhelming the person reading it or burying the most relevant information under layers of navigation.
Apadmi worked closely with the My First Five Years team to build a platform capable of collating this depth of knowledge while delivering an experience simple enough to use in the margins of a busy family life.
Easy navigation
Users can self-select the level of detail that is right for them, from a quick summary to a deeper scientific explanation, navigating the entire experience with just their thumb.
User-friendly language
The scientific content is distilled into parent-friendly language throughout, helping users to see their child’s development differently and to understand the significance of small steps that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Tested by parents before it reached the App Store
Before launch, the My First Five Years MVP was put through extensive real-world testing with a group of 1,100 parents, gathering structured feedback that shaped the final product. This approach ensured that the experience worked not just in theory, but in the genuine context of busy family life: in the kitchen, at the nursery gate, during the ten minutes between bedtime and sleep.
The endorsement from that test group gave the team the confidence to launch publicly, knowing the product had been validated by the very people it was designed to serve.
RESULTS
The app launched to immediate recognition.
Apadmi’s ASO experts helped the app secure several editorial features in the App Store including the highly-coveted “App of the Day” slot, with Apple calling it “a great tool for parents”.
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1000+
users in first month of launch
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4.9*
App Store rating
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5762%
increase in downloads with ASO
Making an impact beyond the home
The reach of My First Five Years has extended well beyond individual parents. Childminders, early years teachers and nursery practitioners have all used the app. Nursery practitioners have reported seeing the impact of having better-informed parents in their settings: children who arrive having been supported through development milestones in ways that are consistent with what educators are doing in the classroom.
The app won the Innovation Award at the MPA Inspiration Awards, recognition of the originality of both the product concept and the technical execution behind it.
“Apadmi has been key to the development of My First Five Years and its people are smart and straight-talking. The team has collaborated with us to deliver on our vision of creating a product which distils 50 years of child development knowledge into an intuitive, easy-to-use app.”
– Jennie Johnson MBE, Co-Founder and CEO, My First Five Years
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