Next up, Mum. My Show and Tell explaining Digital Engagement to three-year-olds
I recently read a blog post that my talented colleague Dean Vipond wrote about explaining design to four-year-olds, and I thought it was the best piece articulating design that I’ve ever read. I wondered whether the challenge of explaining it to young minds was an exercise that had drawn out a real clarity of thought. So, when the weekly newsletter from my son’s preschool (3 and 4-year-olds) asked for parents willing to come in and talk about their work, of course I volunteered!
Where to start explaining my job
On reflection, I realised I had set myself a slightly daft challenge, as it’s complex to explain my role to digitally literate grown-ups, my Mum certainly has no idea what I do at work. And that’s when I can refer to social media channels, they know what a website is, and they are familiar with the concept of people leaving online reviews. My team’s slack channel has a sub head of ‘Team slightly weird edge-case’, which was a bit of a joke at the time, but probably says something significant about the challenge of explaining the variety of roles and skills. However, Dean encouraged me to have a go and I realised that I could focus on a few key principles, I don’t need them to understand every aspect.
One of the most recognised brands in the country
So, what do I do? I work for the NHS. I started by showing them the logo and seeing who recognised any of the letters?
The children were all sitting beautifully cross legged in front of me, but the eagerness to share their knowledge had them almost bursting with excitement and hands were up in the air straight away. I’m not sure why I worried about them participating actively, they were a confident articulate little bunch. The popularity of the letter ‘S’ meant we got there in reverse, but it was a good position from which to explain that it stands for National Health Service. I stifled my urge to praise Nye Bevan and talk about what a privilege it is to have a free at point of need health service as a nation. “Keep it simple, stupid” being my motto for the session.
What is being healthy?
They were pretty well informed on this, with lots of answers about eating well, drinking water and sleeping, some specific healthy food examples shouted out — “carrots” and “prawns”. Obviously.
We then talked about who helps them stay healthy or looks after them when they’re feeling poorly — their parents and carers, the team at nursery help them stay healthy, and doctors, nurses and dentists and other people who work for the NHS all help. I work at the website that helps people know how to look after their health, and to know when and where to ask for help.
Finding health information
Cue another tactic courtesy of Dean — “What colour is poo?” Definitely a good way to get pre-schoolers engaged! Consensus on brown, and I explained that if their poo was a funny colour, their parents may well use our website to look up what that might mean.
I asked for a show of hands about who has had chicken pox? This was most of them, and lot of them were keen to tell me about their medicine and show spot scars, so after some minor crowd control I said it was really likely their mummy or daddy had looked up information on our website. And if any of them had an Alexa device at home (a few excited hands up), they might ask Alexa what the symptoms of chicken pox are, and the answer would refer to the NHS website, which is something I’ve been doing in my job — helping Alexa know how to answer health questions well. Slight exaggeration, but I wasn’t going to go into the detail of syndication and partnerships or the fact most of my time was spent trying to push an arrangement along the most complex stakeholder maps I’ve encountered.
“Show the thing”
In good agile practice style, I wanted to show them something I’d been involved in to bring it all to life. Part of my team supports PHE with campaigns targeting parents of young children, so I thought I’d finish by talking about another thing we do to stay healthy — washing our hands. Naomi Pattem (social media guru in the team) wrote a song and made a fun little video to help children know how to wash their hands properly:
Credits to Karin Mochan for the singing, Naomi Pattem for the concept, the song and hand modelling and Chloe Philippou for filming.
There was much giggling at the silly hand face, and for some reason I don’t fully understand the word ‘knuckles’ was particularly hilarious. They loved it, very positive audience feedback in laughter and shouts of delight when the face appears again at the end. And when the nursery manager asked them what they could remember about the song, they did pretty well at remembering knuckles (strange sniggering again?!), cleaning back of hands and between fingers. One of the children made a typically pre-schooler tangential link to handstands, which was a good opportunity to mention the “10 minute shake up” campaign, encouraging children to do active things with their parents, and gymnastics would be a great example, and again, something my team are involved with.
Reflections
Basically, in 3 and 4 year old language, my job is about making it easy for people to know how to look after their health, and to know where to go for help.
I’m not expecting that this becomes a way to explain digital engagement in the way that I would happily refer people to Dean’s piece for design. I think the children will mainly remember that I was involved in a funny video that used the word knuckle. But I enjoyed thinking about it, and wondering what their future selves will think of ‘digital’ as an entity rather than something that is just utterly intertwined with a physical experience.
