The ‘mental load’ is described as the cognitive and emotional labour of managing a household and family life. It tends to fall unequally to the mother after couples have children.

There are many apps that aim to distribute physical chores more equally in families, but these do not address the invisible burden of the mental load. At worst, they create more admin for the person already carrying more mental load. They may even exacerbate the syndrome of one half of a couple requesting lists and instructions, thus increasing mental load for the person already shouldering that burden.

There is currently no app available to calculate the distribution of the mental load in a couple with at least one child. There are difficulties with measuring, quantifying, then recalibrating cognitive and emotional labour, particularly without creating additional mental load for the person already shouldering the bigger share.

I would like to develop an app with these key objectives:

•Capture and quantify the current cognitive and emotional load of each partner. •Redistribute any unequally divided load. •Actively prompt the underperforming partner. •Create no admin for the over-performing partner.

It is imperative that the app does not require a lot of manual input, otherwise it will add to the mental load rather than reduce it.

The app could help to recalibrate the load by prompting the 'less loaded' person to pick up specific responsibilities, prompted via the app by their partner.

Couples are not necessarily encouraged to pursue a 50%-50% balance, but instead to agree proportions that they mutually find a fair balance in their relationship.

A mobile app has been proposed as the most suitable solution because it is critical that the solution reduces cognitive workload – rather than creating extra admin.

Resources and requirements: 1. Market research to survey the target demographic of couples with at least one child. This will help capture cognitive tasks that constitute the mental load and assess their burden. 2. The project will require ethical approval. It will need to be user tested on human subjects and as it proposes to rebalance labour within relationships it has the potential to cause conflict within these relationships while attempting to resolve inequality.