As Play Moments moves into its next phase of development, the focus is shifting from understanding the problem and building the platform to learning how the approach works with families in real life.
Through the Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award, Play Moments will pilot its adaptive early-years platform with 100 families, testing how personalised, expert-designed support can help parents and carers support their child's speech, language and communication through everyday routines and play.
To support that work, Play Moments is partnering with CREC — the Centre for Research in Early Childhood — an internationally recognised early-years research organisation with more than 25 years' experience informing policy and practice. As Play Moments' learning and evaluation partner, CREC will help shape the pilot, support ongoing learning and independently evaluate its impact.
The collaboration will help Play Moments build a stronger understanding of how families experience the platform over time, what changes for parents during the pilot, how the support fits into everyday family life and where the model can be improved before being taken to a wider audience.
The pilot will run over 12 weeks and will involve families using Play Moments in their everyday lives rather than within a controlled research setting. Parents will receive personalised activities and guidance matched to their child's communication level, needs and interests, while regular touchpoints throughout the pilot will create opportunities to understand what is working, where families encounter difficulties and how the experience can be improved.
For Play Moments, the aim is not simply to measure whether families use the platform. The pilot is designed as a learning process that brings together parent experience, product data and independent evaluation to understand the value the approach can create for families.
"Getting to this stage is incredibly exciting because we are moving from building around what families have told us they need to seeing how Play Moments works as part of real family life. The purpose of the pilot is not to prove that everything we have designed is already right. It is to learn. Working with CREC gives us an independent learning partner who can help us ask the right questions, understand the evidence properly and use that learning to make the next version stronger."
Ioana Axinte, Co-founder of Play Moments
The evaluation will look beyond engagement with the app itself. Play Moments wants to understand whether parents feel more confident supporting their child, whether the guidance feels achievable and relevant, how families incorporate activities into existing routines and how children's communication support can be strengthened through everyday interactions at home.
The collaboration will also help ensure that the evidence generated through the pilot is useful beyond product development. As Play Moments explores future partnerships with early-years settings, Family Hubs, local authorities and health services, understanding how the model works across different families and contexts will be an important part of demonstrating where it can complement existing provision.
CREC will contribute to the evaluation design before the pilot begins, support learning throughout the 12-week programme and bring together findings at the end of the project. This continuous approach means that evaluation is being built into the pilot from the outset, rather than added once the work has finished.
The 100-family pilot represents an important milestone for Play Moments. Earlier stages of the venture have focused on understanding parents' experiences, co-designing with families and strengthening the technology behind the platform. The next stage will bring those elements together and test how the full experience performs over a sustained period with families.
The project is supported through the Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award 2026, which is enabling Play Moments to pilot and scale its adaptive approach while developing the evidence needed for future growth.
"We are delighted to be working with Play Moments on this exciting project. At CREC, we are particularly interested in how thoughtfully and ethically designed technology can support parents and strengthen the everyday interactions that are so important in the earliest years. We will bring our expertise in early childhood research and evaluation to help understand how families engage with Play Moments, what difference it can make in practice, and how the learning from the project can support its future development and reach."
Professor Chris Pascal, Director, CREC
The pilot will provide Play Moments with a stronger evidence base for its next phase, informing future product development, wider family testing and conversations with organisations looking for new ways to provide earlier support to families.
Parents and organisations interested in following the pilot or future opportunities to work with Play Moments can register their interest at playmoments.app.
