The project team followed a ‘test-and-learn’ approach, undergoing several rounds of user research and testing, alongside other workstreams to tackle multiple goals. 

First, we conducted user research interviews with 21 parents in August 2024 to explore their everyday needs and challenges and the appetite for a text messaging service. We recruited parents through a recruitment agency, requesting that our sample include:

• parents in receipt of certain benefits, or with an income below a certain threshold (based on their household size)
• a representative sample of certain demographics (ie, ethnicity, qualification level), family types (lone parents, larger families), and geographies (urban/rural and across the four nations). 

We used a prototype sign-up page for the text messaging service for parents to provide their details and sign up to a waitlist, and received parents’ feedback on it. We continued to develop the parent experience and underlying technology to increase the capabilities of the programme throughout the entire process.

Finally, we conducted a medium-scale pilot test between January and March 2025 with over 1,700 parents across the UK, who were recruited via a range of routes, including:

• referrals by eight local authority partners
• paid ads via Instagram and Facebook 
• posts on the official Instagram feed for BBC Tiny Happy People.

Finally, we conducted a medium-scale pilot test between January and March 2025 with over 1,700 parents across the UK, who were recruited via a range of routes, including:

• referrals by eight local authority partners
• paid ads via Instagram and Facebook 
• posts on the official Instagram feed for BBC Tiny Happy People.

Over the course of the 18-month programme, parents will receive: 

• one text message per week until their child was 24 months old, including a monthly wrap-up each month
• a welcome and closing message
• quarterly check in messages about how they are finding their content. 

This costs roughly £3.40 per parent (including hosting and response texts) to deliver the entire programme. 

During the live pilot, we collected data on engagement rates, referral routes, and rates of parents asking for an adjustment to their content. We also conducted a diary study with 31 parents who participated in the live pilot to find out more about their experience of the service, as well as how often they implemented Tiny Happy People activities into their day-to-day routines with their children.

At the end of the pilot, we also sent out a survey to all of the parents who had signed up (n = 1,763) to collect feedback on their experience and thoughts on improvements, gathering survey responses from a bit more than 10% of our sample (n=186).

In addition to these tests, we have also:

• commissioned 12 new Tiny Happy People videos focused on how parents can support their babies’ and children’s socio-emotional development, advised by our project consultant Dr Crispin Day
• translated almost 100 text messages into Welsh, and prepared to offer the text message programme in Welsh as well as in English in any subsequent delivery phases.