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Childcare that works for the life families actually live.

Pebble simplifies the ineffective processes that make childcare harder than it needs to be. Parents can book and manage care within minutes. Nurseries can react to changing schedules by offering flexible sessions whenever capacity allows.

The post-COVID world accelerated new working norms and expectations. The home office blessing brought unforeseen obstacles, ever-changing calendars, last-minute meetings, and the flexibility everyone expects. Life became more demanding for working parents. Meanwhile, the childcare industry struggled to keep pace.

Project
Pebble
Role
Product Designer
Type
B2B Saas & Mobile
Work
UX Design, UI Design, Interaction Design
Featured
Tech.eu
The Guardian
Sky News

Why childcare feels harder than
it should

Career vs childcare (Parent)

Parents often have to make career trade-offs due to inflexible childcare, with women often taking the biggest hit

Complex offerings (Parent)

Existing government childcare benefits are hard to navigate and result in stressful experiences for parents, or parents missing out.

Relying on family (Parent)

Family members are helpful for back-up care, but overuse causes tension.

Unpredictable capacity (Nursery)

Nurseries are trying to fill unpredictable and excess capacity. Open spots mean a great loss on opportunity for the nursery business

Staffing (Nursery)

Centers must balance capacity and enrollment with staff availability and scheduling

Manual admin work (Nursery)

Small teams must also balance admin work and parent communications with other competing priorities

When work-life balance becomes work-life chaos.

Modern parenting wasn't supposed to look like this. Careers that demand flexibility. Nurseries running on rigid systems. The childcare industry hasn't evolved with the world it serves – leaving everyone scrambling to make pieces fit that simply don't.

NURSERY
How might we help nurseries mange internal operations effectively while providing quality childcare?
PARENTS
How might we make childcare accessible so it fits the ever-changing work and life schedules of parents?

Two sides. One platform. Zero friction.

Pebble connects nurseries and parents through a single platform. As work schedules shift and family needs change, Pebble makes childcare simple, transparent, and adaptable.
Parents book and manage care instantly through the app. Nurseries streamline operations, billing, and capacity through management tools that actually work. Everything stays in sync – automatically.

Booking that takes seconds,
not days

Pebble turns a previously slow, manual process into a simple, guided flow. Parents can see what’s available, choose the sessions they need, and book in seconds - all without waiting for nursery hours or manual replies.

Patterns that emerged

Pebble unlocked a hidden pattern: parents weren't just booking childcare, they were planning their lives. Most bookings happened evenings and weekends, when families finally had time to think.

Additionally, extending the booking window from three months to six months gave parents the freedom to plan ahead - and nurseries the predictability to fill sessions earlier.

Unlocking first-time bookings

Initially, new parents had to wait for approval before booking, but risk losing their spot while waiting. This friction cost nurseries business and left families frustrated.

The solution wasn't removing approval. Parents can book or request instantly, while nurseries approve seamlessly in the background.

Clarity for busy nursery teams

Once a child is approved, nursery staff need instant visibility - not endless scrolling. By redesigning the booking dashboard to surface new requests at the top, I created a clear visual hierarchy.

Teams could see what needed attention first, respond faster, and coordinate better. It made a great difference in the user experience.

“Sometimes when I’d call, the nursery didn’t get back to me at all for 2 days, this is a game changer”

Sam, Parent

“I went from having to chase down a parent and manager to arrange an ad-hoc booking to looking at a notification on a screen and clicking a button, this really frees me up to focus on my primary work as a carer.”

Oscar, Nursery

“What you’re doing is filling our magic numbers...I don’t lose any money, I gain it”

Kelly, Nursery

A peek behind the process.

Coming soon.

Parent Detail
Nursery Detail

Making ideas tangible

The idea of emergency care popped up more and more through research. We looked into different areas of opportunities. The core idea was to offer a transparent offering based on location, real time availability on demand booking. However, COVID-19 made testing and validating this idea very difficult so we made a pivot.

Location based idea (before pivot)

Initial booking concept (during pivot)

Initial booking concept (during pivot)

Initial booking concept (during pivot)

Test, iterate & repeat

We continuously tested both with parents and nurseries to ensure a desirable product. I leveraged methods like interviews, card sorting, co-creation sessions and more to translate the learnings into features.

What parents say ...

“There would be a time where my mom might not be able to bring her, but it wouldn’t matter - I could just book an extra session. And you know that’s the thing with digitizing everything, you can get a solution in real time”

- Mum

What nurseries say ...

“The app and Honeycomb team take the admin burden processes off the already very busy staff - all we need to do is point the parents in their direction and check in with them daily.”

- Nursery Manager

Say 'Hello' for more

Contact me to learn more about my process, iterations, decision making and more.

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