Co-designing an active play parenting program to support emotion regulation in early childhood: Presenting user personas and program concepts

Background

Early childhood is a critical period for developing emotion regulation skills and parenting programs can support this development. However, existing programs often have limited population-level reach. The Active Play program aims to support emotion regulation in children aged 2–5 through play-based physical activity, and is delivered via the Daily Growth parenting app.

Objective

This study describes the co-design process used to develop the Active Play program to ensure it is engaging, accessible, and relevant to diverse parent groups.

Methods

Using the Design Mapping framework, the development process followed three iterative phases: (1) Understand – user personas were created based on qualitative interviews and refined in a co-design workshop with parents; (2) Co-Develop – an overarching program concept was developed through team ideation and co-design workshops, with strategies tailored to real-life parenting situations; and (3) Prototype – scripts for 30 short video-based resources were created and tested with parent end-users, and refined based on their feedback. A final co-design workshop with professionals helped translate co-designed strategies into scripts for video resources.

Results

Four user personas were developed to capture diverse parent engagement styles with physical activity. Co-design workshops identified common barriers to program uptake and effectiveness, and generated user-informed solutions. These insights were integrated into a set of narration scripts for 30 video resources tailored to specific parenting challenges.

Conclusion

This paper demonstrates how collaborative design methods can be used to develop an evidence-based, user-centred digital parenting program. The co-design process ensured the Active Play program reflects parent needs, supports diverse families, and addresses common barriers to engagement. Future research will evaluate the program’s acceptability, engagement, and impact.