At a glance
Capturing the intricacies of how children play, explore and learn opens up a new world of opportunity. Our client runs an annual diary study in which children log what they get up to in their leisure time. But, how could they be sure that the study was capturing everything?
To discover if there was indeed a difference between recalled and real behaviour, we installed smart and wearable technology in family homes. This allowed us to observe leisure time with a level of detail that simply could not be captured by people alone.
The full story
We installed Nest Cams and GoPros in family homes to add richness to our client’s large-scale quantitative study. We also undertook in-home family interviews to better understand differences in observed vs. reported behaviours and to explore the drivers behind different leisure activities.
What we found was the prevalence of sofalising. Families were spending large amounts of time together on the sofa in front of the TV. But rather than being solely focused on the programming, they were using this time to engage in a wide variety of leisure activities.
In the diary study, we witnessed an explosion of time logged watching YouTube and wondered if this had been overclaimed. But when we looked at what was actually happening, we found that the time spent on YouTube was actually underrepresented – YouTube consumption is far greater than we had realised.
Our insight into real behaviour has provided our client with a much fuller picture of how kids spend their leisure time, including the micro moments; the little things people don’t realise they do and therefore aren’t captured in a diary study. This insight now informs strategic decisions whenever they are targeting a younger audience and continues to be instrumental in adding an extra layer of understanding of this diverse and ever-changing audience.
Finalists Best Use of Technology,
The Drum Awards 2019
