Sky Bet: Why we helped develop screen time-monitoring app Scrabit

Lee Willows, Anne and Keith Evans from the charity Young Gamblers Education Trust (YGAM) gave the most passionate presentation I’ve ever seen at Sky Betting & Gaming (SBG). Their personal accounts of the devastating impact that problem gambling wrought on their lives were hugely moving. Turning his experience into a positive, Lee spoke of founding YGAM with the social purpose to “inform, educate and safeguard young people against problematic gambling & social gaming”.

Following their presentation, YGAM and SBG embarked on some areas of joint collaboration. One of YGAM‘s desires was to find new ways to reach and engage with their youth audience, beyond their existing train the trainer and peer education projects. Although highly successful, these programmes used traditional paper materials and communication methods.

Lee and team were keen to develop a self-help app, which would raise self-awareness in users of their screen habits and encourage positive behaviours through signposting. Whether gambling, gaming or social media, the negative impacts of excessive screen time on a young and vulnerable audience are a growing societal concern.

However, with neither the in-house skills nor the budget to commission development, YGAM had been unable to progress with their idea. We therefore proposed a collaborative development approach, with SBG staff donating their time pro-bono to help develop and deliver an initial version of the app. We formally agreed that at the end of the project YGAM would be free to take the source code, assets and any other IP created, and develop this independently; SBG would purely be offering free mobile development expertise.

Starting with a joint hack day, where YGAM experts presented their vision and initial coding began, the work continued by using learning & development time. At SBG we trust staff to use up to 10% of their working week for projects that stretch their knowledge, abilities and skills. We created a virtual team of iOS developers and UX designers, collaborating with YGAM who steered the requirements, content and branding.

The app centres on a series of questions that establish the user’s current reality, and then mirrors these back to the user as three simple summaries; time spent on devices, money spent and level of control. The user can then choose to focus on one of these areas, with the app signposting external expert guides/help, and reminding them daily via push message about their goal; progress charts allow the users to track their progress.

With the target audience being young digital savvy users an interactive and engaging UX was proposed; this drove the fully native iOS development approach to deliver slick animation and responsiveness. Native also facilitated the ability to deliver push notifications, and the storage of user responses and state locally. To eliminate all concerns and risk surrounding personal data privacy, no user data leaves the device whatsoever, and therefore nothing is stored centrally.

One of the last questions was the brand. The YGAM team proposed a portmanteau of “screen habits” and Scrabit was born. Some further great work by the SBG designers resulted in the logo; an S doubling as the infinite feedback loop of continual positive habits.

With the minimum viable product launch deadline set for Responsible Gaming Week in early November 2018, we ran a beta trial in October using Apple TestFlight. This garnered valuable direct feedback from our key demographic, and allowed us to make those final tweaks. It was cliff-hanger time during app submission as iTunes Connect was offline for a period (what are the chances?!), but we passed review without a hitch and successfully launched as per the YGAM plan.

Looking back, I’d say we were pretty successful given this was our first collaboration of this type. Our two organisations worked very effectively together. The SBG staff provided technical and product expertise, and were able to contribute to a very worthy cause. YGAM brought passion, domain knowledge and drive to the project, and now have a new tool in their educational portfolio.

So what’s next? The obvious step is to produce an equivalent Android version; we had to drop this from scope to hit the deadline and it is a key gap for a large swathe of the target audience. Beyond that, I am hoping that we continue the collaboration and assist YGAM with their highly valuable work.