Talk Around Town:

A Mobile App to Bridge the Word Gap

Seminal research by Hart & Risley (1995) identified the 30-million word gap.

Children of low-income families experience fewer language opportunities than children in families of higher income.

Interventions, resources, campaigns, and tools have been developed to increase the quality and quantity of parent talk.

Long-standing challenges remain, however, in supporting the generalization and maintenance of parent/caregiver talk across the varied settings or routines of family life.

Community settings offer a rich and diverse array of topics not readily available in the home or child care settings.

Early Language Experiences

Mobile App Development Usability Testing

Talk Around Town: How Does it Work? Talk Around Town delivers fun, real-time, location specific tips and reminders

help parents increase the quantity and quality of talk with their young child.

The app uses GPS technology on smartphones to deliver tips while visiting community settings—stores, libraries, parks—when they are in that setting.

Anywhere parents and children go, Talk Around Town delivers tips that are tailored to child communication level, family language, and type of location.

How do parents get started?

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Additionally, when implemented by early childhood providers programs (i.e., home visitors) access a web dashboard to view families’ outing data, and parent responses to a brief in-app survey. These data can inform intervention efforts.

To ensure a viable, useful product for families and providers, our design

approach has been based on the Minimally Viable Product (MVP; Ries, 2009)

approach.

The app was initially designed with sufficient features to disseminate it and

receive feedback that results in the greatest amount of learning that can be

obtained from minimal effort.

Allows for a lean approach to development and refinement, while developing

the app in an iterative manner, with extensive field testing and input from a

variety of end users.

Evolution of Talk Around Town

Home Visitors (n=5) provided feedback on app functions and usability of web dashboard

Parents (n=12) used the app in over 250 outings, and provided feedback on usability and helpfulness.

Across 15 community outings, in our real-time survey, this parent gave positive ratings on the helpfulness of the app (average of 4.67 on 5-point scale).

Parent “clicked” for more information on average 2.5 times in each of the 15 outings, indicating sustained engagement.

Comparing pre- to mid- intervention LENA data (2 outings/data point), overall rates of speech per minute increased for parent and child:

1) Adult words increased from 40 to 54 words.

2) Child vocalizations increased from 2 to 4 words.

3) Adult-child turns increased from 9 to 12 turns.

When a parent chooses a tip, the When a parent chooses a tip, the detail screen provides examples and/detail screen provides examples and/

or helpful hints. Parents can or helpful hints. Parents can ““likelike” ” and and share tips on social media.share tips on social media.

Future iterations will examine Future iterations will examine gamification elements to encourage gamification elements to encourage

sustained use over time and add to the sustained use over time and add to the ““fun factor.fun factor.””

Location Log of

Outings

Set location radius

Mapped

location Selected tips for this location

Download the free app

Complete brief set up

Start receiving tips

Current main tip screen Current main tip screen utilizes professionally utilizes professionally designed componentsdesigned components

Amy Turcotte, Kathy Bigelow, Dwight Irvin

Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, University of Kansas

Nick Eastwood-Tallmon

Asgaardian Workshop

Original Tip Main Screen. Original Tip Main Screen. Parents click on a tip for Parents click on a tip for

more information.more information.

In a future release, parent In a future release, parent chooses the type of information chooses the type of information

he or she wants to see.he or she wants to see.

Pilot Testing

“I like all of the tips that I have been getting to help [child] with communication and learning new words,” and “I love that [my child] is beginning to say more single words.”

For more information: For more information: TalkAroundTown.waypointTalkAroundTown.waypoint--platform.com platform.com

or contact Kathy Bigelow at kbigelow@ku.eduor contact Kathy Bigelow at kbigelow@ku.edu