Lucy, what is your area of expertise?
I’m fascinated by how technology affects real people and have dedicated my career to ensuring it is as much of a benefit as possible. I’m most well known for creating the Good App Guide and helping to found Fundamentally Children – born out of a desire to help families choose good, developmentally beneficial apps for their children. I reviewed well over 400 apps for children, particularly educational apps, observing children playing these first-hand has given me a wealth of insights. I’m also a qualified Engineer and user researcher and spend most of my time now as a consultant supporting those developing new apps, games or digital toys for children. I’ve worked on a huge range of products from tech to help the elderly stay in their home to the new McDonalds Happy Studio app.
What is it that you like about addressing audiences?
It gives me real pleasure to share my knowledge with others and feel that this may in some way help them. I also love how giving seminars always challenges me to stay up to date giving me a great excuse to research all the new products out there. In the world of apps and tech not only the products themselves change all the time but also the preferences, concerns and priorities of children and families – listening to audiences at seminars helps me stay in touch with this. I tend to change the content of my seminars after every one – adding new products or tweaking what I say in response to questions to better resonate with and so help the audience.
What do you see as the new ideas to address in 2017?
Modern families have so many challenges with tech being one of the major problems as well as potential solutions. I’d love to steer more families to use it as a benefit wherever possible. So far I’ve spoken mainly on children’s apps (a topic close to my heart which I’ll never tire of) but there are so many other areas I’d like to help families with if I get the chance: practical ways for parents to manage screen time and keep children safe online, how to inspire a love of science/tech (STEM subjects) in children (particularly girls), giving parents a grounding in coding/programming, tips and tools to make tech a positive influence in your family, and technology to support older relatives from getting them online to products for dementia sufferers.