At Hoop we want to have a positive impact on the lives of families and their children. And it’s not only our team who shares this goal. Organisers across the UK are motivated by their passion for entertaining and educating children as are the families who use Hoop and our investors.

We believe passionately that Hoop makes family life easier and that the activities we help introduce children to will have a positive impact on their lives. What’s more we hear regular anecdotes supporting this. We hear them from the families we meet in our office, who come in to test new versions of the app; from the families who are kind enough to review us in the App Store or Google Play; and from all the comments we receive on social media.

We hadn’t spoken to our users about this issue directly however, and so, with that in mind, we decided to conduct our first survey. To uncover opinions towards Hoop and the impact it has had on family life.

The results have been really inspiring.

91% of respondents said that they “do more activities with their children out of the home thanks to Hoop. Similarly 83% said that they “do more things together as a family.” Our survey also revealed that families are finding new activities for their children to do too: 84% said that their “child has found a new interest or activity they enjoy”.

91% of respondents said that they “do more activities with their children out of the home”

We also surveyed families about whether they were making more friends as a result of using Hoop, and while these results weren’t as dramatic, it is great to see that Hoop is fostering new connections with the community too.

27% of respondents said that they had made new friends, while 39% said that their children had made new friends.

Our friends at EasyPeasy have a strong evidence basis for the impact of their service has on a child’s cognitive development. We hope, in future, we can point to independent research that verifies our beliefs in Hoop too. Until then however, we’re thrilled with the responses our own survey has yielded and continue to encourage families to come forward and share their experiences with us.

The Hoop team has achieved so much over the past twelve months that trying to distill it all into this post has proved challenging. What’s more, 2016 was a great year for us; we were chosen by Apple as one of that Best Apps of 2016 and closed a round of fundraising from a stellar line up of investors that would allow us to to reach even more families.

We’re not ones to rest on our laurels however, and so in last year’s review we were clear to highlight our three areas of focus for the coming twelve months. They were:

1. Taking Hoop nationwide
2. Building a world class app
3. Helping activity organisers across the country

So how did we do?

Hoop Goes Nationwide

Amongst all the things we’ve done this year taking Hoop nationwide has required the largest effort. Our Operations team has continued to refine our expansion playbook, making it more efficient as we open to new cities and adapting it to work in rural areas too.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Hoop now covers every inch of Britain — just take a look below! As well as helping families find things to do locally, going nationwide means Hoop can help out when you’re travelling too and allows us to support some amazing national franchises such as Baby Sensory, Big Fish Little Fish and Monkey Music. More on that in a minute.

Our national expansion has seen the number of monthly activities listed on Hoop skyrocket. At the end of 2016 that number stood at 18,000, today it’s over 70,000! We’ve found 15,655 different Arts and Crafts classes,14,349 for Music and Singing and over five thousand story times! From their emergence last year, Baby and Toddler Raves continued to rise and rise — 3,852 parties were hosted across the country in 2017. Coding and other technology courses such as robotics have also increased in popularity, there were over one thousand of them in the last twelve months. For the trend spotters amongst you keep an eye on Parkour for kids! There were 35 classes recorded on Hoop this year and we’re expecting there to be even more in 2018.

Gathering all these activities and ensuring they stay up-to-date is no small task and key to our success is our amazing remote team — many of whom are Hoop users themselves. Alongside our in-house tech known as Hula they manage the extraordinary number of activities you see in the app. Here they all are at our summer meet up.

Making a World Class App

Since January we’ve updated our iPhone and Android apps a grand total of 45 times. With every update we’ve tried to introduce new features that will make family life easier and we’ve continued to seek guidance from the families who use Hoop while we do it. Whether via one of our many surveys, by taking part in parenting panels, inviting people into our office or just over a cup or tea in a local cafe — we’ve put families at the centre of all the work we’ve done and used their ideas to shape the apps. In 2017 we launched:

• Reviews, so you can read real opinions from other families
• New ways to search for activities
• Improved how we display an activity’s schedule
• Added ‘quick facts’ and activity benefits
• Introduced a dedicated class finder
• Launched ‘Booking History’ that includes all your upcoming tickets

However the most important addition was the introduction of booking…

Book with Hoop

Earlier in the year we conducted a survey where we looked at the different reasons families choose an activity organiser. Families told us that one of the main reasons they were put off an activity was an ‘overly complicated booking system’. When we read this we knew we would be able to help.

Our goal was to make booking an activity through Hoop as simple as possible. In fact, within just a few taps a family should be able to: reserve their spot; pay for the activity (with Apple Pay, Android Pay or PayPal); securely transfer any details about their child to the organiser; and, view all their upcoming tickets in one place.

We lifted the curtains on these new features just six months ago and the results since then have been fantastic. Families using Hoop have made close to 10,000 bookings from over 500 organisers and, what’s more, families tell us that it couldn’t be simpler to use: mission accomplished!

Just like 2016, 2017 ended with a bang. Apple chose Hoop as one of the Best Apps of 2017 and we became one of a handful of apps ever to be chosen two years in a row!

Hoop for Organisers

If the theme for 2016 was about helping families discover all the incredible activities happening around them then the theme for 2017 has been helping organisers. In February we launched Hoop for Organisers, our platform that allows anyone who run’s family activities to add their listing to Hoop and engage with the families using the app.

It’s been a huge success, with over 5,000 organisers joining the platform in the short time that it’s been up and running: there’s first time founders like Anna from Baby Broadway who is using Hoop to promote her family concerts; franchises such as Little Kickers who allow Hoop families to book free trials using the app; and world renowned institutions such as the The V&A and The British Museum who use Hoop to promote their family programmes.

As with our apps we’ve made learning from the organisers who use our platform a top priority, adding new features and refining existing ones in response to the feedback they’ve given us. We introduced Hoop Pages, which give organisers a beautiful profile on both the app and the web–take a look at these from Rave-a-Roo, Amanda’s Action Club and Magical Circus. And our boosted listings programme which allows organisers to take bookings on the app, manage the number of spots available and see a list of attendees.

Looking to 2018

Hoop is a business of two sides. During 2016 we focussed on helping families discover the world of amazing activities that live outside the home, ready for their children to enjoy. And while we pursued this in 2017 too, we shifted our attention to the organisers behind these activities, with the aim of helping them run their own businesses through access to new customers and suite of online tools.

Supporting both sides of Hoop to the best of our ability will be the focus for 2018. That means continuing to speak to families and organisers to improve the services we offer them, making improvements to our mobile apps and Hoop for Organisers and ensuring that the range of activities available to discover is better than ever.

Whether you’re a member of the team at Hoop, a family member or activity organiser we all share the same overarching goal: to improve outcomes for children by introducing them to activities that will make them laugh, learn and make new friends. And while here at Hoop we play just a small role in this, it’s what’s driving us to be better every single day.

We hope you all have a relaxing Christmas and peaceful new year, because 2018 is just around the corner and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

🎈

Hoop in 2017 was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back in 2015 we threw a party to celebrate the launch of Hoop. We invited organisers and performers to showcase their activities, handed out lots and lots of balloons and met hundreds of local families.

One of the unexpected successes of the day was a drawing table that was manned by our talented lead designer Humso. Children as young as 18 months old were scribbling away on postcards so much so that we were left with hundreds of artworks by the end of the day. As well as the sheer quantity we were bowled over by the creativity of these mini-Picassos — we knew that we had to put them to good use!

From the beginning we wanted Hoop’s design to evoke the enjoyable chaos of spending time with kids. We wanted to recognise that Hoop is being built for adults, but it can still reflect that same sense of fun too. The drawings from our launch party provided us with the source material we had been looking for; they captured this emotion precisely, and, better still, they had all been draw by kids!

Weaving these drawings into Hoop’s visuals was the only way to do them justice. To showcase them to everyone who uses the app and to provide a subtle reminder of why families, organisers and the team here at Hoop do the work we do day in and day out.

More Scribbles Please!

This is the perfect moment to make a request for more of your family’s doodles. If you’re interested, here’s what we’d like you to do:

1. Produce your artwork — ideally on white paper
2. Snap a photo of it and email it to hello@hoop.co.uk
3. Include the name and age of the artist and an email address where we can contact you

We’ll showcase the artworks that get sent in here on Hoop Rolling and elsewhere on Hoop. For those who make it into the app we’ll throw in a limited edition Hoop tote bag too!

Have fun.

See more artwork by following Hoop on Instagram and also on Dribbble.

Scribble was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From first steps to walking

Twelve months ago Hoop was a team of 14 and the app was being used by a thousand families in a small part of north London. Fast forward to today and team Hoop is now 30 people strong. What’s more the app is now available across all of London and in six other cities too — covering a parent population of over three million. We’ve been featured in the Evening Standard, The Huffington Post, the Metro and more recently the Sunday Times too. To top it all off Apple chose Hoop as one of the Best Apps of 2016.

One of the great things about last year was discovering so many amazing things happening for children across the country. We’re regularly blown away by the creativity of the thousands of organisers who help kids laugh, learn and see the world in a new way — activities such as the Family Bollywood Session in Bristol, a Robot Programming Workshop in Liverpool and Junior Jam’s African Drumming and Singing session in Manchester.

The sheer quantity of activities on Hoop has also sky rocketed. From a few thousand at the start of the year to over 18,000 unique activities on Hoop at anyone time. During the course of 2016 we’ve seen 3,429 stay and plays, 281 Lego building sessions, 7,367 activities that are completely free. And, our personal favourite, 138 kid friendly raves!

2017 is going to be even more fun…

First of all we’re planning to bring Hoop to the whole country. You’re going to be able to use Hoop in every single city and, for the first time, in rural parts of the country too. Hoop isn’t just for city dwellers.

Second we have a host of new features in the pipeline that we can’t wait to share with you all. We want to make your experience using Hoop better than ever, and, as we have done with every update, we’re going to continue to put the experiences of the families who use Hoop front and centre.

Finally we’re going to make it easier for the organisers running kid-friendly activities to share what they’re doing and build up their profile on the app. It’s no exaggeration to say that Hoop would be nothing without their hard work and we want to make their lives a little easier too.

Thank you!

Finally, we wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has made Hoop possible over the last year. To the families and the organisers. To all the people who have taken part in research. To those who have sent in their ideas and to those who have shared activities. We’re looking forward to making you all smile in the year ahead.

😺

Hoop — 2016 in Review was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today we’re introducing a new feature on Hoop that will help us better serve families of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Many of the activities you’ll find on Hoop welcome all children, however until now, you weren’t able to discover activities specifically designed for children with additional needs. With our newly introduced SEND category you’ll be able to do exactly that. Just tap into it from the What’s On screen to find specialist play sessions, sign language workshops, autism friendly film screenings and much more.

This is our first step towards supporting the SEND community and we’re excited about taking many more in the future. We’ve spoken to families and professionals to help shape our work here but we are particularly keen to receive feedback from the families who use the feature. If that’s you, email us on hello@hoop.co.uk with your thoughts.

Finally, if you run a SEND focussed activity and would like it added to Hoop you can share it with our team here.

Thanks to Amber Onat Gregory and Dr Pandora Giles for their support during this project.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities on Hoop was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our mission at Hoop is to help families everywhere entertain their kids.

To do this we believe families should have access to the full range of things happening around them. From local stay and plays, story time and fétes to big budget pantomimes, museum sleepovers, baby raves and superhero cooking classes!

Right now there are over 9,000 events on Hoop, far too many for time-scarce families to trawl through. Our challenge then is to make discovering these great activities as easy as possible.

Hoop helps by allowing families to “Pick a Date” and browse categories. You can filter to find stuff close to home and tell us when in the day suits your child. But what if you don’t know what you’re looking for? What if you’re just after some inspiration? For Hoop to pick out some of the gems from all of the ideas it has has nestled inside?

To solve this we’re introducing Hoop Picks. A list of twenty ideas, updated every day, and chosen just for your family.

Hoop Picks are chosen for your family by our in-house algorithm which we’re calling Rubix. Rubix looks at all the events happening on Hoop and decides which will most interest you; taking into account things such as the event’s popularity, how far away it is from home and the ages you have set. We’ll continue to improve both Hoop Picks and Rubix over the coming months, but in the meantime you’ll find your picks on the redesigned “What’s On” screen. Remember to save the ones you like — it will update every day!

Hoop 2.0

As well as Hoop Picks we’ve added quite a few new features in version two — in fact it’s the biggest update since we first launched the app!

• We’ve updated our “onboarding” to help new and existing users make the most out of Hoop.
• Moved “Saved Events” into a new tab bar at the bottom of the app so you have access to your saved events from anywhere.
• Redesigned the event screen to provide a clearer layout and easier access to directions.

Today’s Saved Events

For those of you who use Hoop on an iPhone we also have a special addition. From now on you’ll be able to access your saved events from your phone’s “Today” screen — the one you access by swiping down from the top of your iPhone.

Open your Today screen, tap “Edit” at the bottom and finally tap the plus symbol next to “Saved Events.” From then on, when you access your Today screen, you’ll see all the events you’ve saved which are also happening today!

What’s next?

We’ve spoken to hundreds of families since launching Hoop to get an idea of the things they like and the things we could do better. In fact, everything you see on Hoop is the direct result of feedback from real people.

These conversations have given us countless ideas, so expect to see even more changes to the app in coming weeks — we’re not finished yet! In the meantime feel free to send your ideas and feedback to hello@hoop.co.uk, we love receiving your emails.

Build Files

With every release Hoop publishes a ‘Build File’ that breaks down every major interaction on our app. Feel free to download the PDF and take a look at how we do things. Why we do this.

• 2.0 (iOS) [5.1 MB]
• 2.0 (Android) [5.5 MB]

Hoop Picks and Hoop 2.0 was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’ve been asked a few times why we named the app Hoop. People typically like the name, but why we chose to call it Hoop leaves them wondering.

We’d known from the beginning that we wanted the app to feel playful. We wanted it to evoke the fun of childhood and the pleasure you get from spending time with little ones. Equally we didn’t want people to think that this was something for kids, it’s an app that will be used by adults after all.

After what seemed liked weeks of adding names to our growing ‘no pile’ one afternoon we started talking about kids games. Given our brief it felt like games were a great area to explore, particularly those we enjoyed playing as kids. We found lists of them online and were happily working our way down until someone (we’re still unsure who) got to the Hula Hoop.

It turned out that the Hula Hoop was popularised by the rather wonderful Richard Knerr an American Inventor who’s Wham-O company, as well as championing every child’s favourite circle, also introduced the world to the Frisbee, Silly String, the Hacky Sack and the Slip’N Slide. We were awe struck.

Obviously we couldn’t call the app Hula Hoop so Max said: “what about just Hoop?”

We liked it a lot.

It was short, so with any luck easy to remember, plus it definitely ticked the fun and playful box. And hoops — which we think of as cooler circles — are beautiful, naturally occurring shapes that provide a wonderful canvas for branding and design.

Then we got lucky.

Anyone who has ever dreamed up the perfect name for their company will know that getting the web address can be a bit of a nightmare. These days even variations such as ‘get’ and ‘app’ before and after the name are likely to be taken. And getting the .com or .co.uk? Forget about it!

The lucky part was that hoop.co.uk was owned by a nice chap named Tim. Tim liked our plans for Hoop and so after some time to chew it over was willing to part company with a domain he’d owned since 1995! We were thrilled.

And so there you have it: simple; fun; and part homage to a classic kids game. Throw in a touch of luck and you’ve got the story of why we named it Hoop — what’s on for your kids.

You might find it interesting to know that back in ’95 the Hoop in hoop.co.uk stood for Happy Object Oriented Programmers. As programmers ourselves it gave the name a lovely double meaning!

You can read the New York Times’ obituary for Richard Knerr here. He passed away in January 2008.

Why did you call it Hoop? was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are lots of things happening on Hoop. Right now Hoop lists over eight thousand unique events across London, everything from local stay and plays to improv for kids and engineering workshops.

To help make sense of all these events the Hoop app will hide anything that’s not age appropriate, it lets you filter by distance, price and category and most importantly, you can tell it when you’d like to do something.

But there is still a good chance you’ll find more than one thing that takes your fancy. In fact, the families who use Hoop tell us that shortlisting the things they find is a regular task. They make lists, add stuff to a calendar and keep mental notes. We want Hoop to help with problems like these and so as a first step today we’re unveiling a new feature — saving.

When you download the update you’ll notice that every event on Hoop now includes a star for you to tap. Doing so will add that event to your saved events which can be found on the redesigned home screen. You can also remove events from your list by tapping the star again.

It’s a simple but pretty handy feature that we’ve enjoyed using in the office for the past few weeks but have been keen to get into your hands to see what you make of it. We’re excited to learn how and when families use saving so it can be improved in future updates.

If you can travel to the Clerkenwell area of London and would like to take part in some usability testing be sure to let us know by emailing hello@hoop.co.uk — we pay for your time and have good supply of balloons and stickers to take home too!

Build Files

With every release Hoop publishes a ‘Build File’ that breaks down every major interaction on our app. Feel free to download the PDF and take a look at how we do things. Why we do this.

• 1.1 (iOS) [11 MB]
• 1.1 (Android) [14 MB]

Saving the events you find on Hoop was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When we first started working on Hoop we were keen to launch in a small area so we could test our belief: that families are looking for fun things to do together, but finding them is far too difficult.

We launched the first version of Hoop in Islington back in August and were amazed with the response we had. Countless families told us they to found it far too difficult to find all the wonderful things happening across the borough. They told us what they liked about the app (and what they didn’t) and we responded with seven updates that included a much clearer layout and features such as sharing and filters. We also had a launch party…

Launching in Islington made a lot of sense to us. It’s a wonderfully diverse borough with great events that we’ve experienced first hand. It’s also the home of Hoop HQ. But for a while now we’ve been desperate to give Hoop to the whole of London… and now that day has come.

When you download the update from the App Store or Google Play there is a good chance you won’t notice many changes. The list of events you’re familiar browsing now includes a location search to help you find things to do across the city, but almost everything else remains unchanged.

Everything except the events of course.

Over the past few months, Hoop has had an average of 400 events live in Islington at any one time. Now we’re operating across London that number is closer to 3,500 — an increase of 800%. We’ve gone from covering an area with a population of 200,000 to 3.3 million — more when you include the people who regularly travel to the city.

To achieve this has required a huge amount of work on the part of everyone at Hoop. We’ve scoured the city for the venues and organisations that run events, we’ve found new people to join our team of local researchers and we’ve made a bunch of changes to Hula, the internal app that helps us manage everything you see on Hoop— more on that in another post.

The result is an app brimming with things to do. Ready for families across London to explore and find some fun together. We couldn’t be more excited.

Thanks to four year old Victoria who contributed artwork for this post.

Build Files

With every release Hoop publishes a ‘Build File’ that breaks down every major interaction on our app. Feel free to download the PDF and take a look at how we do things. Why we do this.

• 1.0 (iOS) [9.1MB]
• 1.0 (Android) [8.3MB]

Hoop Goes London Wide was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hoop’s product team spends a lot of time using other company’s apps. We’re looking for ideas, inspiration, and for insights into how other teams have solved ubiquitous, niggling UX problems. If we find an app we’re really impressed with we’ll do a full teardown:

• Capture every screen in Photos
• Share the screens with the team on Dropbox
• Knit all the screens together
• Annotate and scribble on print-outs

This isn’t particularly revolutionary. I’m confident that the same tactics are employed by product teams and design agencies the world over. Discovering how other teams have solved the problems you face is one of the keys to quickly moving forward in a fast-paced industry. (If you’re interested in learning about the masters of the teardown, read about how the auto industry does it in Wired.)

In the process of making Hoop, we’ve solved various interesting challenges. So while the idea of someone tearing it to pieces — critiquing all the design, cherry-picking the best bits for their own — sounds pretty awful on the surface … if it helps them overcome their own challenges, I’m all for it.

And we can even take this a step further.

From now on, with every update of the Hoop app, we’re going to publish a high-resolution image of every screen, and every major interaction, on the app. We’re calling it a build file.

We’d love it if others joined us. Whether you make an app, a website, or a piece of desktop software, we’re calling on product teams elsewhere to publish their build files too.

“But this will just lead to rampant copying?!”

This is a natural fear. But the truth is if you make a popular app this is already happening anyway. Just take a look at the excellent User Onboard from Samuel Hulick. We believe that it’s better to be contributing to a community whose aim is to help everyone make better products, than to worry about someone with no creativity beating you at your own job.

What’s more, the rigour of publishing these files is a great habit for your team to get into. You’ll notice areas that need improvement, create meaningful naming conventions and hierarchies, and you’ll engage others in a public critique of your work.

So, here on Medium, with every update to Hoop, we’re going to publish our build file along with the usual release notes.

We’re showing you ours … we’d love it if you showed everybody yours.

Build File

• Hoop 0.6 (iOS) — read our release notes in this earlier post

Thanks to Benji Lanyado, Jonathan Petrides, Lawrence Brown, Alexander Edge, Daniel Howells and Utku Can for reading an early draft of this post.

Teardown this App was originally published in Hoop Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.