Ten questions to ask before commissioning a studio for a children's experience

Why these ten questions specifically?

Ten questions, no more, because a body that asks twenty in a single meeting rarely gets an honest answer to even half of them. These ten extend what we have already published about edutainment and about the government and brand pathways, rather than a new standard set against them: they reveal the quality of a candidate studio, not its memory for polished phrases. We grouped them under six heads: the goal, the measure, safety, consent, ownership of what gets built, and what happens after launch.

What is the goal you want to change for the child, not a description of the project?

Every serious project starts with one sentence describing a specific change wanted for the child, not a general description of the product. A studio answering with "an engaging interactive platform" has not answered yet; a studio answering with "the child learns to delay a small want today" has actually answered. This is exactly where the first stage of our method begins, and what the government pathway page asks in institutional language.

Who is the child, exactly: their age, language, and the setting they will use this in?

A four-year-old differs completely from a sixteen-year-old in how they play and how much independence they can handle, and an experience designed for one age band rarely suits another without a fundamental change in form and pacing. A studio that does not ask a child's age before asking about the technical platform has started from the format rather than the child.

How will success be measured, and what guardrail metric watches for possible harm?

Success alone is not enough of a description: a program that raises one usage number might be hiding an equal harm alongside it, such as anxiety rising in the name of discipline, or usage hidden rather than reduced. A good question from a commissioning body asks for two indicators together, not one: a success indicator confirming the goal was met, and a guardrail metric confirming no hidden harm came with it.

When is the success measure agreed: before building, or after?

The measure chosen at the start decides what gets improved after launch, so postponing that conversation until after delivery means measuring whatever turned out easy to measure, not what actually deserved measuring. A studio that raises the measurement question at the first meeting, rather than the final review meeting, deserves more trust than one that postpones it.

What data will be collected about the child, why, and for how long is it kept?

Every data field added deserves one question: what breaks if we do not collect this? Whatever the experience runs fine without does not deserve to be collected at all, and a real name, a phone number or a precise location are rarely necessary for a child. A written answer about where data is stored and for how long matters more than a verbal promise of care, as we explain on our safety page.

Does anything in the design push the child to stay longer than they should?

A daily streak, a random reward, or a feed with no clear end are all tools that build a motive to reopen the app rather than a motive to learn. One simple question reveals a great deal: how does a session end, and does it end at a natural boundary or at a manufactured cliffhanger pulling the child into another round?

Who tests the experience with children before launch, and how is parental consent obtained?

No piece of work counts as finished before real children have tried it and their notes have been heard honestly, and those notes must be recorded exactly as spoken, not as later rewritten in adult language. A body that asks this question early protects itself from a polished pitch built on adult opinion alone.

What is the parent's role inside the experience itself, not merely around it?

A real role answers three small questions: what is the child doing, what can be changed, and how will a concerning moment be noticed? A dashboard that takes ten minutes to understand is not a role but an added chore, and a child who does not know their parents can see has already lost part of the trust before the experience even begins.

Who owns the content and the design after delivery?

A question that deserves a written answer inside the contract itself, not an implicit assumption discovered later. Who holds the right to modify the design after delivery, and who owns the characters if the experience is ever expanded, are sub-questions that deserve an explicit formula rather than a silence each side later reads its own way.

Who updates and maintains the experience a year after launch?

A digital experience needs ongoing technical maintenance, and its content needs updates as the children who first used it grow older. A body that never asks what happens after a year may discover then that no one holds the keys to what was built: not the studio, which has moved on, and not an internal team that was never trained for it.

How does Dawani answer these questions?

We answer with what is already published, not a new promise: we start from a goal concerning the child in the first of our five stages, and we measure impact against the goal we started from rather than against minutes of use, holding to as little data as possible, no addictive mechanics, and a clear role for parents in every experience. Some of these questions, such as the content-ownership formula and what happens after a year, are settled in the contract itself rather than on a public page, and that is a difference we would rather state plainly than let a body guess on its own.

Where to start

Copy these ten questions into the tender document before the first meeting, not after it. A body that asks them early saves itself a costly late review, and a studio that genuinely welcomes them will answer clearly from the first meeting onward. You can read the glossary of terms we published alongside this article if an unfamiliar word comes up along the way, or tell us where you stand through the Start a project form.

Quick questions

Do all ten questions need to be asked at the first meeting?

No. The goal and measurement questions suit the start of any conversation, while the safety, consent and ownership questions belong in the tender document, not a passing verbal exchange, before any contract is signed.

What if the studio avoids answering one of them?

Avoidance is itself an answer. A studio unwilling to put its answer on data or ownership into the contract is effectively saying it prefers to keep the matter vague, which is reason enough to ask another studio instead.

Are these questions only for government bodies, not brands?

No. The same questions suit a brand considering a family-facing experience, and we wrote them to be asked of any studio regardless of who is asking.