Children with learning difficulties often miss out on timely support because traditional tools feel clinical and detached from everyday life. Teachers are usually the first to spot issues but may lack the time, training, or resources to act. Parents, though motivated, often remain underutilised. Hence, delays persist due to fragmented stakeholder roles and insufficient tools. When not identified early, the delays can limit a child’s full potential not only in academic spaces but also in their broader development and self-esteem. This work addresses the need to facilitate parents, therapists and educators to collaboratively observe developmental cues and sub-disabilities in natural settings. Employing co-design sessions, field observations and iterative prototyping, a system of products in the form of a customisable learning kit-based solution was designed. This home-based kit of interactive everyday tools integrated with a digital screening tool aids parents in tracking early signs of learning delays. Based on a multi-sensory approach, principles of Montessori, the kit embeds learning into the child’s natural environment. Furthermore, the intervention aims to foster better parent-teacher collaboration by providing shared tools and observation records to monitor a child’s developmental progress. Preliminary feedback from experts through prototype demonstration and discussions validates the kits’ potential for improved engagement, better grasp of concepts, and increased caregiver confidence in observing developmental milestones. Various design considerations based on children’s environment, age, motor and cognitive development, social interactions and behaviours are described to transform the everyday surroundings of children into a learning ecosystem. A replicable design framework is proposed that leverages the home environment as a learning ecosystem, enabling multi-stakeholders to collaborate in shaping the child’s progress. Thus, this paper offers a ‘system-of-products’ exemplar that empowers stakeholders (parents and teachers) to deliver key services (monitor and track developmental cues) to beneficiaries (children) within the targeted ecosystem.
Doshi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.