TACKLING THE TOILET TRAINING CRISIS

There’s a toilet training crisis in the UK. Over the last decade, the age that kids leave nappies behind has risen from 12-18 months to 3-4 years, with more than nine in 10 teachers reporting having at least one child in class who is not toilet trained.

To help people adopt healthier toileting habits and assist parents through the difficult stage of potty-training their kids, Andrex has launched a new educational platform called GoTime. Featuring advice, tools, and personalised toilet training plans, parents and caregivers will find everything they need to educate their children in a fun and engaging way. 

As part of this platform, Andrex asked PRELOADED to design and build a digital product, and learning framework to provide children and caregivers with the supporting material and tools to help children to practise the health habits that will last a lifetime – The GoTime app was born!

PLAYFUL STORYTIME

PRELOADED were keen to build a digital product that supported the existing family dynamics.  One of the main areas of exploration was how GoTime could enhance existing child-and-caregiver moments. Through a funny, interactive read-along we sought to empower children through agency and child-centric play, whilst giving caregivers a clear supporting role to celebrate and normalise talking about toileting! 

Working closely with our long-standing partner, child development expert Dr Amanda Gummer, and the Andrex team, PRELOADED developed a learning framework, based on the core motor, cognitive, social and emotional milestones associated with toileting, to make sure that our product offer, and specifically our narrative and skills focus, were inclusive and in line with best practice.

Storytime has long been a moment of family bonding and was identified as a prime opportunity to impact long-term behavioural change. Through positive, affirmative language and tone, we wanted to bring caregiver and child together to laugh, and normalise a topic that can often bring anxiety and stress. By introducing a character (Bunny!) needing support, we saw children in testing take on a nurturing role, helping bunny overcome their worries, and accidents, and in doing so – talking about their own concerns too!  

CHARACTERFUL STORIES

Central to the Playbook concept is a world of friendly and relatable characters, each of whom help reinforce the learning at different stages of a child’s development.

In developing the suite of characters – Bunny, Mouse, and Bear – we also developed a unique visual style and language that borrowed from the best of children’s storybook illustration.

PRELOADED were also given the remarkable opportunity to take the Andrex Puppy into an entirely new format for the first time in its 50 year history.  The culturally iconic Labrador Retriever puppy has only ever been shown using practical photography since it first graced UK screens in 1972. The result is a wonderful supporting character, embodying the same playful and mischievous puppy mentality that has always captivated audiences.

SUPPORTING FAMILIES AT EACH STAGE

At each stage of Design and Development, PRELOADED, in partnership with Fundamentally Children, tested and refined the proposition with children and parents to ensure the current, and future value of the ongoing product offer. 

The GoTime app is conceived as an ongoing product, which can adapt to meet the different needs of care-givers and children on their toilet training journey. By creating focussed ‘playbooks’ that children WANT to play, we could ensure the best opportunity for learning, in line with the celebrations and regressions unique to every child.

PRELOADED built the GoTime app on a fully extensible framework, allowing the application to be updated with new languages, content modules, and future features.  

Taking this platform approach to development allows PRELOADED and Andrex to build an established content roadmap to keep audiences motivated and supported as they progress through their development journey.

GoTime is available to download now on iOS and Android devices.