Made by a mom: why I built Cairn
I closed a casino ad on a runway, started taking notes, and a year later there was a phonics game my boys could read in airplane mode without anyone selling them anything. This is how that happened.
What I did before this
I am an AI consultant. For a decade I have helped companies build software that respects the humans using it: better default settings, less aggressive personalization, fewer dark patterns, clearer privacy ladders. Most of that work was for grown-ups who consented to be users.
Then I had children. The same arguments I had been making in conference rooms about adult software turned out to apply at higher stakes to kids software, and almost nobody was making them. The kids edtech category is not bad because nobody knows how to do better. It is bad because nobody has paid for it to be better.
The casino ad
On a transatlantic flight last year, a game one of the boys had downloaded refused to work offline. The second we touched wifi on landing it served him a 30-second video ad for a gambling app. He is five. I closed it on the runway, turned the iPad over to my husband, and started taking notes on the back of a customs form.
The notes turned into a list. The list turned into a spec. The spec turned into ReadCraft, which is the working name for what is now Cairn Read. I built the first version in a few weeks with my boys playtesting every level.
What surprised me
How much of it was design discipline rather than research breakthrough. The science of reading has been settled for years. The hard part is shipping a game that respects the science instead of layering glitter on top of phonics theater. The harder part is choosing not to add features that would obviously increase time-in-app, because the brand thesis is that time-in-app is not the goal.
Also how much my kids preferred the calmer version once they had played it for a week. The first hour they reached for the louder thing. By the second week they were asking for the reader game by name.
Why the publisher, not just the one app
Because the next time I find a category of kids software that respects neither the child nor the parent, I would like to have a brand with a track record from which to ship the replacement. Cairn is the publisher, Cairn Read is the first game, and the next nine games on the roadmap are real plans, not aspiration. They will arrive as they arrive.
What you can do
Cairn Read is coming to the App Store. It is $3.99 once and works offline, with no ads and nothing collected. If you have feedback the boys missed, send it to hello@playcairn.com. I read every email.
And if you have ever closed a casino ad on a runway, you understand the brand thesis already. There is nothing else to sell.
Cairn Read is coming to the App Store.
A phonics adventure for ages 3 to 6, built on the research above. $3.99 once, with no ads, no subscription, and nothing collected about your child. Fully offline on the iPad.
See Cairn Read