Our experts came for a visit

As a parent, you'll know how it feels when your children aren't occupied but you haven't got the opportunity to be free.. This was something that we, at Albert, took advantage of during the autumn break, when 15 of our colleagues’ children visited our head office in Gothenburg for a creative day together, mixing business with pleasure. Weiwei Cao Persson, Director of Product Design at Albert, talks about how she got the idea of having this day and how things went:

The idea was born at the end of the summer when a colleague brought his children to the office. The kids, who love to draw, helped bring out the look of our playful pet in the app – Mochi. During the autumn holidays, and with Monday as a study day in Gothenburg, we were happy to invite our employees’ children to spend a day with us. Here they could use their imagination to help design our flagship product: Albert Junior!

What was the purpose of the day? 
At Albert, we're committed to creating apps for kids and we realise that we're not the end users. We want to make all the activities in our app interesting and appealing to children so that we can awaken the desire in them for learning. As adults, our challenge is to understand the world of children – their thoughts, interests and current trends. To overcome this challenge and ensure that our product is truly fun and engaging, we took a decisive step. We want to 'co-create with children' in our product development. 

Tell us more about the workshop! What was the highlight of the day? 
The day consisted of various activities such as creative workshops, user tests, including our new exciting game prototypes, and many other fun activities. The best moment was the dance session where both children and colleagues danced in unison to our Bikko dance. That was definitely a high point!

What did the kids think of the day?
We're happy to tell you that all the children had a great time on this special day! It warmed our hearts to hear that many children are looking forward to returning to our office again, and some even said that "I will work at Albert when I grow up!".

What did the parents think of the day? 
Many of our colleagues are parents, and having the flexibility to bring the kids to work during study days is fantastic. It facilitates juggling between work and family responsibilities, reduces stress and allows you to get the job done. 

Did you get the results you wanted? 
The children brought lots of vibrant energy to our office and during the creative workshop we collected insightful thoughts from them. Our UX/UI designers observed and recorded extensively during the user tests, providing valuable understanding of children’s activity patterns. This in turn helps our designers to make improvements to the interaction design. Testing our prototypes with children has always been highlighted as a very important step in our development process. This allows us to validate our design theories about fun gaming activities early, and to get quick feedback from our users.

Will you have a similar activity day again? 
Yes, absolutely! Involving children in our work and development process has always been a top priority when designing our apps. That’s the key to ensuring that what we create is not only relevant to our users, but also entertaining.