Meet Buddy, the viral device helping kids (and parents) with routines

FastCompany: It’s 7:40 a.m. My toddler is still in her pajamas, teeth unbrushed, melting down because I gave her vanilla yogurt instead of strawberry, and there is no way I will get her to daycare on time. Now it’s 9:30 p.m., and after an hour of trying to get her to wind down and get in bed, I doze off on her bedroom floor. And the whole thing is going to repeat itself tomorrow. Every parent has been here. Kids thrive on routines, but sticking to them can feel impossible. For decades, the go-to fix has been low tech. You taped a chore chart to the fridge, and gave your kid a sticker for every task completed.

But what if the chart could respond—and get a kid excited to use it? That’s the idea behind Skylight Buddy , a palm-sized touchscreen device that effectively gamifies children’s routines, easing the challenge of getting out the door or going to bed. Buddy treads a delicate line with technology. It uses a few simple animations—a character who encourages the child to keep going and a celebratory shower of stars—to motivate kids to complete tasks, helping them develop important executive functioning skills and making family life go smoother. But it also leaves out any of the addictive qualities that get kids hooked to devices.

When I tested Buddy with Lily, my 4-year-old, she was eager to earn her stars, but when she was done, she happily moved past the screen back to her busy little life. It’s a winning formula. Skylight Buddy launched June 1 at $139 (or $119 with a subscription), and its first run sold out instantly. The company is restocking today. [Photo: Buddy] Design for children and parents Buddy sits on a child’s nightstand and walks them through their routines. At first it looks like a simple, squarish digital clock, complete with a round yellow button on top to switch off the alarm.

Parents customize their daily tasks, the child bonks the button when they have completed each one, and they receive fun animations when they have finished the full routine. Getting to that design was an iterative process. Skylight’s first product, launched after a Kickstarter campaign, was a digital, connected photo frame. The founder, Michael Segal, came up with the idea as a way to share pictures with family scattered across the country. But as customers began interacting with the frame, Segal began to realize that there were many ways a family could use a shared digital screen.

That led to Skylight’s family calendar, which makes it easy to see everybody’s schedule for the day. Based on customer feedback, the team added chore charts for kids. According to Nichole Rouillac, founder of the San Francisco industrial design studio Level , whom the company hired to design Buddy, the calendar never quite spoke to kids the way Skylight hoped. Its interface was too complicated for younger children and it didn’t have kid-friendly animation that would motivate them to complete tasks.

“They wanted a dedicated device that can help parents with the chaos of those morning and nighttime routines that we’re all too familiar with,” she says. Skylight tapped the woman-led design firm because they knew its team intimately understood parents’ struggles. With Buddy, Rouillac essentially built the device she wished she’d had when her eldest daughter—who is now 13—was little and really struggled with transitions. Rouillac remembers dealing with massive meltdowns getting out the door right when she needed to get to work. “Buddy is a reflection of the struggles I had with her,” she says.

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The launch of Skylight Buddy represents a significant innovation in the intersection of technology and child development, addressing a pressing need for mindful tech solutions, making it highly relevant and impactful for brand strategy professionals.