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Fisher-Price:
The Future of Parenting

PROJECT

CLIENT

Fisher-Price

SERVICES

  • Platform & Product Development
  • Strategy

INDUSTRY

  • Consumer

Continuum and Fisher-Price partnered to envision parenting in the future.

Challenge

Fisher-Price has an impressive history of creating innovative children’s products and is one of the most loved and trusted brands by moms.*
But despite this venerable legacy, the company faced two existential challenges. First, three enormous technological shifts are rewiring their market: sensing, monitoring, and data assessment. Second, the needs and expectations of today’s parents are complicated and continually shifting.

As an 85-year old company obligated to uphold early childhood development needs and safety concerns, Fisher-Price felt tension between the pull towards a provocative future and preserving the values and beliefs upon which the company was founded.

In short: Fisher-Price had to evolve their offerings to remain relevant to today’s Millennial parents and to transform themselves into an organization of the Digital Age. To ensure that the transformation would be successful, they tapped Continuum as a partner.

*Based on a 2015 Survey of 1,549 moms in the U.S., Russia, and China.

Awards

IDEA—Silver 2016

Research & Insights

Backcasting to the Future

Early in the project, we decided to employ our backcasting model. Backcasting enables us to analyze consumer values and trends simultaneously to establish an ambitious-yet-pragmatic vision for the future.

Keep It Human

Our research revealed that Millennial parents’ attitudes toward technology and parenting are rapidly changing. A consistent theme emerged: Technology must become invisible and incorporated into people’s lives to achieve heightened consciousness, not distraction. We worked technology into innately human experiences, crafting products and services to enable sharing baby’s first steps with dad or immersing children in a digital/physical world of their own imagination. We turned to technology to enhance sensory capabilities, rather than build a screen-based future.

Changing Perceptions

Fisher-Price was aware of the hesitations that Millennial parents have with the current-day standard for baby gear and toys. Today’s parents seek naturally-inspired materials and a design aesthetic that resonates with them, not simply baby alone, in each and every product.

No Boundaries

Our lives online hold nearly as much weight as our lives offline. For young kids, the distinction is becoming increasingly blurred. Millennial parents need to help their children navigate this sophisticated landscape. The single product that once did it all will give rise to an interconnected web of unique designs, bigger than any one device. Future mindsets, open-ended play, and learning won’t be governed by walls or centered around one toy, but will cross senses and be influenced by context and mood, anytime, anywhere.

Dynamic Evolution

The core nature of design has changed with the arrival of connected devices. The future will call for having better instead of having more. Product experiences will evolve, generating meaningful new experiences through constant updating. With a simple bug patch, we can create new features through software or firmware updates. Objects can stay relevant for longer, creating new delights, and new functionality, with every new version.

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Solution

We spoke with thought leaders and subject matter experts about business, technology, and culture trends around parenting. Our subject matter experts included David Rose, Sean Lally, Skylar Tibbits, Steve Brown, and David Weeks. This approach led us to understand the tension that parents face: they see the potential learning opportunities in technology but worry about making children overly reliant on technology, and unacquainted with important interpersonal and physical interaction skills.

These insights led to a strategic vision for the role that technology will have in Fisher-Price’s business in 10-15 years. The vision portrays a seamless integration of technology, allowing parents to spend more time with their children and facilitate early childhood development.

As David Rose, one of our subject matter experts, said: “The world doesn’t need more stuff, it needs smarter stuff.” He also offered the provocation that “the future smells like wood,” adding: “I imagine a future where toys and objects are made of natural materials like wood but [we] still engage with technology through RFID and projection.” This focused on the idea that products should have invisibly embedded technology and last longer as they have the ability to evolve with the developmental needs and learning stages of children.

RESULTS

One of the main manifestations of this vision is a short film that communicates the role of Fisher-Price in the lives of young families in the future. To help tell the story in an engaging and compelling way, we partnered with Emmy-nominated director of photography Igor Martinovic to create "The Future of Parenting." The film envisions how Fisher-Price can become an industry leader in providing technology solutions to help empower new moms and dads in raising their children while making playtime more immersive and magical. It was released at SXSW Interactive in 2016 during the panel event “Parenting Without Pixels,” a discussion featuring David Rose, Rosalind Picard, and Mattel’s Michael Shore. (Click here to listen to the SXSW conversation.) The outputs from this project are currently being used by Fisher-Price to create new product and service offerings that are on a trajectory toward this vision.

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