Context 🚗 👶 📱 🖼️ 💭

On a recent family road trip to visit family in a far-off land ... 🚗 @iteles found herself in the back seat sitting next to our toddler 👶 who was very bored of being strapped into a rear-facing car seat. 💺 Prior to the trip @iteles had prepared several non-screen based games to occupy the child, 💡 but after several hours of journey, these had all been exhausted. ⏳ The child was now on the verge of melt-down and @iteles had to resort to the "big guns" ... 🖼️ Showing our child videos of himself at the aquarium or playing with his cousins, 🐠 is our last resort for "reinforcement learning" entertainment. 💭

Problem 🤔

Our child always wants hold the phone where the videos of themself + cousins are. ✋ In day-to-day life we try to avoid our child handling a smartphone as much as possible. 📵 He has never seen a mobile game or "children's" YouTube Video so does not know of that possibility. 🤯

Note: We would NEVER give our child a YouTube video to wach under any circumstances; 👎 it's well-known that YouTube, even the "kids" version is poison!! 🚫 see: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/f53lkWpo Yes, we see the irony of this TED Talk about the dangers of YouTube being published on YouTube!! 🙄

Question: How can we let our child safely interact with a screen in specific circumstances?

How do we let our child hold an iPhone or iPad in the car while preventing them from accidentally closing the window/app where the video [of themself] is playing - this happens every time!

Idea 💡

Make an iPad Case on the Laser Cutter or 3D printer (MVP) that deliberately covers both the bottom and top of the screen so that the person using the device is restricted to a single app.

This may require disabling certain "multi-tasking" gestures on the device. But the idea is that they cannot accidentally (or deliberately) escape the photos app.

Related

We found ourselves "offline" - in remote areas with zero network coverage - several times on the trip and Google Photos - our least bad option for sharing family photos - did not cache the photos from the album!! So there would quite often be a loading spinner and white screen. 🤦‍♂️

Could we create a stripped down photo/video viewing iPad/iPhone App that uses Flutter + Google Auth to access photos in an album and download them to the device so they are available offline.

Potential Market 💰

If we can build an MVP of this and create a Kickstarter I would wager that at least 10k parents with small children would buy this. Why? Because people want to let their children use a specific "safe" App e.g. FaceTime or Photos but they want to restrict it without fear the child can "escape" the App.