Why I’m Asking Parents to Help Me Design a Screen-Free Activity App
Saturday morning, 8:15 a.m. My six-year-old is lying on the kitchen floor, staring at the ceiling, announcing that she is “so bored she might actually turn into a rug.” Her three-year-old brother is using a wooden spoon to drum on a plastic container, and I’m standing over the coffee maker with my phone in one hand, trying to remember the rules to a game I played once at a birthday party.
I end up scrolling past a video of a toddler making a mess with flour, then a list of “five easy crafts using only toilet paper rolls,” then an ad for a subscription box. Meanwhile, the drumming gets louder. I put my phone down, find a deck of cards, and teach my daughter how to play Go Fish. The moment passes. But the pattern doesn’t.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that moment. Not just because it’s a familiar one for so of us, but because I’m a designer by trade, and I have an idea I can’t shake. I want to build a simple, screen-free parenting app. Yes, I know how that sounds. An app to get kids off screens. The irony isn’t lost on me, and honestly, that’s part of why I’m reaching out to actual parents before I build anything.
The idea isn’t for children to use. It’s for us—the parents, the grandparents, the babysitters. A tool we can open when we’re standing in the kitchen at 9 a.m. with no plan and no energy, and it gives us a workable idea for something to do together that doesn’t involve a glowing rectangle. The catch is that the app itself lives on our phone, so the irony is built in. But I’m not trying to create a parenting utopia. I’m trying to solve a very specific problem: the moment when you need a spark, not a curriculum.
The other day, I wrote a rough prototype on paper. I asked myself what I actually need when my daughter says she’s bored. I need something that uses what’s already in my house. I need something that works for both a three-year-old and a six-year-old, even though they have completely different attention spans. I need something that doesn’t require me to prep supplies or read a 500-word blog post. I need a line. “Fill a bowl with water and see what floats.” That’s enough for us. Then I started wondering: is that just me, or does that resonate with other parents?
So I decided to ask. I’ve spent the last few weeks chatting with a few friends, some neighbors, and a couple of teachers I know. I’m not running a formal study. I’m just trying to validate the idea before I pour months into building it. And the conversations have been revealing, not always in the ways I expected.
One mom told me she doesn’t need more ideas. She has a Pinterest board with 700 pinned activities, and she has never opened it when she actually needed it. “I need something that doesn’t make me feel unprepared,” she said. “When I see a craft that requires egg cartons and googly eyes and I don’t have either, I just close the app and give the kid the iPad.” That struck me. The problem isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of ideas that fit the real constraints of a tired parent on a Tuesday afternoon.
Another parent mentioned that her kids don’t want her to suggest activities. They want to feel like they came up with it themselves. So if she opens an app and says, “Let’s do this,” they often refuse. But if she sets out a few random objects—clothespins, a cardboard box, some yarn—they’ll invent their own game. So maybe the app should offer prompts for setting up a space, not instructions for a structured project. Or maybe it should offer categories like “things to put on your child’s tray while you drink your coffee.”
A kindergarten teacher I spoke to said she sees the aftermath of screen-heavy mornings in her classroom on Mondays. Kids struggle with transitions, with open-ended play, with the frustration of not being told exactly what to do next. She told me she wishes parents had a “menu of invitations”—low-barrier setups that let children lead. Put three different types of tape on a table and see what happens. Put a small toy in a bowl of water with tongs. She made it clear she wasn’t judging anyone; she’s just the one who sees the kids recover their imagination by lunchtime.
I’ve started to narrow down the concept. The app has a daily prompt, maybe three, categorized by time available and energy level. “How much fight are you willing to put up?” That’s an actual filter I want to include. Because some days I can handle a mess, and some days I cannot. The activities should be simple enough that I can read them in ten seconds while the toast is burning. No ingredients, no printouts, no screens for the child. Just a suggestion that either works or doesn’t.
But here’s where I need outside feedback. I don’t know if this is actually useful, or if it’s just a solution in search of a problem. I’ve walked into enough first-world-parenting traps to recognize one. An app to help you not use an app is a little like a self-help book about procrastination. So I’m asking the people who would actually use it.
Last week, I tried a mini version with my own family. I didn’t tell them what I was doing. I just made a list of simple prompts on index cards and put them in a jar. When the morning boredom hit, I drew one. It said, “Build a tower out of things that make noise.” My daughter grabbed pots and lids and a metal colander and spent twenty minutes stacking. My son just hit things with a spoon. It wasn’t a beautiful educational moment. It was a twenty-minute break from my phone, and it bought us time until my coffee was cool enough to drink.
That’s what I’m hoping for, really. Not a magic app. Just a slightly better default than standing in the kitchen scrolling for something we already know doesn’t exist. The question I’m wrestling with is whether putting the prompts on a phone makes it harder or easier to put the phone down. I honestly don’t know.
Maybe the ideal is a physical object—a deck of cards, or a jar with prompts written by a teacher. Maybe the app is only a starting point, a bridge to get people into a habit of choosing from a menu instead of doomscrolling. But there’s something about being able to ask the app for a prompt that matches the weather outside and the toddler’s sleep quality. I keep coming back to the idea because it feels more honest than pretending I’ll ever be a parent who has all the activity ideas in my head.
So this is where you come in. If you’re a parent or teacher and this idea sounds useful—or useless—I’d really like to know. Do you like the idea of prompts categorized by energy level and mess tolerance? Would you prefer a physical deck? Is it helpful to have a “need to burn energy before naptime” option? Or is this just another thing that looks good in a blog post and dies in your pocket?
I’m not looking for validation. I’m looking for information. The Saturday I spent teaching my daughter Go Fish instead of handing over my phone, the deck of cards did what no app could do. It was already in my hand, and it wasn’t asking me to like or share or subscribe. Maybe the most useful tool is the one that disappears after it gives you a nudge. I still don’t know if that tool needs a screen near it or not.
But I know what I want to figure out. And for now, that’s enough.
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