Activity Tracking
Data for the people who need it most
Meadow records every meaningful interaction the child has with the app. This isn’t surveillance — it’s a clinical tool. Speech-Language Pathologists need data to plan therapy sessions. Parents want to see their child’s progress week over week. Insurance companies may require usage documentation when families seek device funding.
The key difference from other apps: all data stays on the iPad. Nothing is sent to a server. No accounts, no cloud sync, no analytics services. The data belongs to the family and the family alone.
Every meaningful interaction, automatically
The event logger captures five types of events. Each one creates a record with the same standard fields, making it easy to search and filter later.
Word Taps
Which word was tapped, when it was tapped, what scene the child was in, and what developmental tier they’re using.
Speech Output
What the app spoke aloud — whether from a word tap, a feelings expression, or a conversation response.
Navigation
Scene entries, zone drill-downs, view switches. Where is the child spending their time?
Conversation Interactions
Which follow-up was selected in conversation loops. How is the child building sentences?
Session Boundaries
When the child starts and stops using the app. How long are their sessions? How often do they return?
What each record looks like
Every event captures the same five fields, making the data easy to search, filter, and export.
Each event record can be analyzed against the seven communication functions from M1-006: Requesting, Refusing, Expressing Feelings, Commenting, Social Routines, Directing, and Answering. When a child taps “want banana” (an SCS follow-up tagged as “requesting”), that maps directly to the Requesting function. Over time, SLPs can see which communication functions the child uses most and which need more support — exactly the data Beukelman & Light’s model calls for.
Raw data becomes meaningful insights
The event log collects data in the background. Here’s what it enables — turning thousands of individual taps into clear progress reports.
Weekly Progress
May 19 – 25, 2026What ships when
The raw data collection happens in M2 (this milestone). The parent-facing and SLP-facing reports and visualizations like the one shown above are planned for a future milestone. M2 lays the foundation — every event is captured and stored so that later milestones can build beautiful reports on top of it.
Fast, private, and completely on-device
The event logger is invisible to the child. It runs silently in the background, never slowing the app down, never sending data anywhere.
- All data stored locally on the iPad using Apple’s built-in database
- No network calls — not to our servers, not to analytics services, not to anyone
- No cloud upload, no accounts, no syncing to external services
- Parents can view and export data through the parent-gated settings
- Children never see or interact with the event log — it’s invisible to them
Privacy is non-negotiable
Meadow will never send usage data off the device. This is both a design principle and a requirement for the Kids category on the App Store. Many competing AAC apps collect usage analytics, send data to cloud services, or require accounts. Meadow does none of these things. The data belongs to the family — period.
Supporting families who need funding
For families seeking insurance funding for AAC devices (under the E2510 SGD classification), usage logs provide evidence that the device is being used for its intended communication purpose. Without this data, families may struggle to justify device renewals to insurance companies.
Meadow’s event logger automatically builds a usage history that can support:
- 📋 Funding renewals — proof the device is being used regularly
- 💰 Therapy billing — session data for SLP documentation
- 📈 Progress evidence — demonstrating vocabulary growth over time
What “done” looks like for activity tracking
Every item must pass before the event logger ships.
| Requirement | What This Means | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive event capture | Every word tap, speech output, navigation action, scene entry, and conversation selection creates a record | Required |
| Standard record fields | All records include timestamp, event type, word (if applicable), current scene, and developmental tier | Required |
| Performance at scale | 1,000+ stored events cause zero degradation in app responsiveness | Required |
| Queryable data | Events are searchable and filterable by date range and event type | Required |