-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 1
Allow2 Primer
This Primer provides an overview of the Allow2 platform, and covers most of the concepts across the system.
The base premise for the Allow2 Parental Freedom Platform is to:
- Simplify device management for parents - remove all unnecessary interactions, supply a simple solution for developers and manufacturers to greatly reduce their costs and provide awesome controls to their customers.
- Be flexible and handle exceptions well - real life does not conform to regularity!
- Offload effort to the child - parents are time poor and need to teach responsibility, if a child wants more time or needs a configuration change, get them to ask for it and remove that pressure from the parents
So essentially, our goal is world peace, at least in the family unit.
Allow2 provides a base “family” account for all users who have an account. So essentially one parent can set up their account and “invite” or add children (children don’t need an account, but they get better controls if they have one, so probably good to give them an account whe they are old enough to understand how to use it).
That parent can then also “invite” their partner, grandparents, friends, teachers, babysitters and others to “assist” on management. This spreads the load and promotes more communal family units.
Allow2 also understands temporary users and invited families (such as when your child’s friends come around to play video games)
The primary failing of other parental controls platforms is they associate configurations such as allowed time periods, quotas, bedtime and more with days of the week. This completely fails to meet one of the main needs of a family and that is to handle exceptions to the rules: Holidays/Vacations, Sick Days, Birthdays, etc.
What typically happens with standard old approaches is the parent diligently sets up the normal days of the week and restrictions and limits on the computer, on the DVD player and other devices and services, but then the children have a summer break, so the parent has to take time to reconfigure everything for the summer break and then remember to reset everything when the children return to school. Just impossible if you are running late for work and little Johnny is sick and stays at home.
Life is powered by exceptions, so the fundamental difference between all other systems and Allow2 is that Allow2 provides a patented approach to handling configurations by wrapping them up into “Day Types”.
Parents set up what a normal “School Day” should look like (permissions, time limits, etc) and the “set and forget” a standard Monday as a “School Day” for certain (or all) children.
Then they can simply go to the calendar and set the next 2 weeks as a School Break, or Monday Dec 25 as a Public or Government Holiday. Diwali, etc.
Devices are a central concept in the system. Devices represent any family-owned “thing” that may need quotas or time restrictions, etc.
- A home router.
- A gaming console (XBox, PlayStation, PSP, etc).
- Apps on smart phones, computers or tablets (Angry Birds, etc).
- A smart bedroom light, light switch, power board, etc.
- Desktop and laptop computers.
- DVD players, Televisions, iPods.
- Toasters, fridges, etc.
The factor determining if the thing being controlled is classified as a “device” is if it typically purchased by a parent or child and used in that family, either shared or used by one child.
Everything that is used by many families (anything that is typically not a “Device”) is referred to as a “Service”.
- Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other Social Platforms.
- Web sites, forums, etc.
- Multiplayer gaming platforms (Blizzard, Minecraft, etc).
Services are treated fundamentally differently to devices and have a different connection mechanism.