I’ve long believed that some of our best ideas come along when we are not purposefully thinking about them, but are relaxed and absorbed in something else. A change of environment helps too. I find that when I stop actively trying to solve a problem, my mind often continues working on it in the background. The answer may not come immediately, but it sometimes surfaces when I least expect it.
In August 2024, we went on a family holiday to Agios Nikolaos in Crete. Our daughter was six years old at the time. We had taken her on holidays abroad before, but this one felt different. She was no longer a very young child and had far more awareness of what was going on around her. She also had a clearer understanding of what going on holiday actually involved, including travelling through an airport, flying on a plane and spending an extended period in an unfamiliar place.
For our daughter, who is autistic, that greater awareness did indeed bring excitement, but it could also make travel particularly demanding. Airports are busy and unpredictable places. Familiar routines and structure appear to disappear. There are unfamiliar noises - many of them loud - and, of course, there’s queuing!
A tablet can be genuinely helpful for many children. For some autistic children, children with ADHD and those with other special educational needs and disabilities, familiar content can be particularly valuable when everything around them feels unfamiliar. That was certainly true for our daughter; her tablet gave her a dependable space to return to when she needed it.
But when the technology did not behave as expected, that dependable space could quickly and easily become another source of frustration.
When helpful technology becomes frustrating.
During the year before that holiday, I had become increasingly aware of the difficulties our daughter could experience when something went wrong with her tablet. A slow response, an unexpected interruption, or content that would not load when she wanted it could quickly lead to frustration and dysregulation.
Those problems came with us on holiday. They were more apparent when combined with unfamiliar surroundings and a different routine, although perhaps I simply had more time to notice them and try to help. Luckily, a swimming pool is a better distraction than any tablet!
The volume control on the plane was a simple example. She could turn it all the way up to full in a moment, potentially disturbing other passengers. We then had to intervene, which created a stressful interaction because she did not want us to turn it down.
Connectivity was an issue too. For long periods of the journey, Wi-Fi was unavailable. We had anticipated that and downloaded as much content as we thought she might want, but there was no way to predict every choice in advance. As the tablet’s storage filled, it too became slower and less responsive.
So we had a situation where the device was providing familiarity and support whilst also creating new points of friction.
Looking for the right project.
At the same time, I was thinking about what my next project might be. I had worked as a software engineer for around 20 years, spending the first five in academia, which I really enjoyed, and the next 15 developing specialist compliance software for businesses. That work was and is necessary but it can also be rather dry and sometimes even, dare I say, boring.
I knew I wanted my next project to be what I thought of as an “apprentice piece”. This is not a widely used term today, but I’ve always understood it to mean one substantial piece of work that would bring together as many of the skills one has acquired as possible. I also wanted to revisit parts of software engineering that my day-to-day work no longer required.
During the holiday, I often woke early to watch the particularly spectacular sunrise and enjoy the slightly cooler air. I would listen to the sounds of the day beginning: fishermen setting out in their boats, the occasional two-stroke moped, laughter from those late to bed, and hospitality staff preparing for the morning rush. By the second week, I was relaxed enough to sit with a coffee and, rather than answer yesterday’s emails, just simply sit and think.
My thoughts returned to the airport, the plane journey and the planning we had done to make sure our daughter’s tablet remained useful. It seemed entirely feasible to create something more responsive and robust, with better safeguards and a predictable, uncluttered user experience.
The difficult part would be balancing those safeguards with the freedom and functionality that made the device useful in the first place. That was the engineering bit!
As though a lightbulb had turned on, I began researching the idea. At that point, I recognised it as a problem worth solving, and within a few days I understood that it was also the project I had been looking for.
Assessing the realities of everyday use.
My initial research suggested that there was no single, unified solution. I found specialist devices designed for particular purposes, including augmentative and alternative communication, alongside mainstream consumer tablets that did not appear to account for the difficulties we had experienced.
A lot of online research pointed towards the Apple iPad, but I’m an open-source kind of guy and it was not the route I wanted to take.
I did not want to create something so restricted that it lost its usefulness, but equally, there would be little value in another general-purpose tablet that left families dealing with many of the same problems. The challenge was in finding the right balance.
My first thoughts were around the concept of a robust tablet with a long battery life. For a device to be thoroughly useful, it needed to provide support throughout the day rather than require charging part-way through it, and I soon learnt that capacity figures do not tell the full story.
A car may have a large fuel tank, but that means very little if its engine is inefficient. Hardware, software and real-world use would all affect how long a battery actually lasts.
Remote control was another important consideration. When our daughter experienced difficulties with her tablet, taking it away to fix the problem would often escalate her frustration and cause friction. It seemed obvious that parents and carers should be able to make appropriate changes remotely, without unnecessarily interrupting the child.
The point was not to restrict the child, but to manage the device reliably. I find my own mobile phone frustrating at times, so I knew these controls would need to be clear, quick and reliable.
I could also see no reason why children should be expected to use underpowered technology simply because a device was “intended” for them. There seemed to be a mismatch between hardware specifications and price for some devices aimed at children.
The solution also needed to account for how a neurodiverse user might really interact with it; including repeated taps, replaying the same part of a video, or moving quickly between different kinds of content. That meant sufficient processing power and memory to remain responsive, alongside the graphics capability required by modern children’s content. It also needed to be robust enough for everyday family life.
On the software side, I knew that Android would provide the right foundation. I had previously built Android applications and, for a part of my career, had worked closer to the operating-system level. I could begin developing proof-of-concept ideas without starting entirely from scratch.
What’s in a name?
Back in the UK, on a rainy Sunday afternoon in September 2024, ideas for what to call the project began to form. My wife and I were having a light-hearted discussion about it when she said, “Just call it the ‘Ellietron’.” It was a playful suggestion based on the name Ellie, with a passing nod to the “Rossatron” joke in the sitcom Friends.
I quickly started to experiment with different forms and spellings until Eletron emerged. It felt distinctive, retained a connection to the experience behind the idea and, most importantly, it stuck.
From an idea to Eletron.
Those first notes led to further research and the development of early proofs of concept. Some of my technical assumptions changed, in some cases significantly as the work progressed, but the original concerns remained: reliable hardware, appropriate safeguards, a predictable user experience and fewer unnecessary points of friction for users and their families.
Two years later, the idea has become the Freedom 11, supported by the eleOS user experience, the Eletron Companion app and specialised content developed by the company for neurodivergent users and those with other special educational needs.
People have different needs, preferences and ways of interacting with technology, but we have tried our best to create a design that is as flexible, adaptable and purposeful as possible. The aim is to provide a grounded starting point that makes it easier for families to adapt the experience to the individual.
This is the first article on the Eletron Blog. Future articles will include practical guidance, honest app reviews, expert perspectives and updates about our work. It seems appropriate to begin by explaining the experiences that first made me think a different kind of tablet might be possible.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope that you follow along as our company gains momentum, and please do feel free to get in touch should you have any questions or require support.