Amazon Rapids: Kids Reading App
16387
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Amazon Rapids: Kids Reading App

Category
Digital, Product, Strategy, UX, Video, Web
About This Project

Setup

Kids aged 5 to 12 were spending hours a day on screens, and very little of that time was reading. Books felt like homework, so they lost every time to games, group chats and video. Amazon Rapids started from a smart idea: original stories told as text conversations, with illustrations dropping in like photos from a friend. Kids loved the format. The experience around it didn’t keep up. Early readers had no help with hard words, kids had no reason to come back the next day, and parents couldn’t see any of it.

What I Led

I led UX and product design across the full experience, for kids and parents together.

For kids:

  • A profile for each child, with a reading buddy they choose themselves.
  • A home shelf shaped around each child’s age and interests.
  • A chat reader with Read Along, which highlights each word as it’s spoken.
  • Tap to Say, which pronounces any word and breaks it into parts.
  • A built-in glossary that turns every tapped word into a personal word collection, with quick games and a word-of-the-day widget.
  • A Reading Buddy that listens while kids read out loud, helps them sound out tricky words and cheers when they finish a chapter. It never marks anything wrong.
  • Streaks, badges and unlockable chapters that reward the reading habit, not speed.

Signature Stories brought in characters kids already knew, voiced by the actors behind them: Niko and the Sword of Light with Tom Kenny as Mandok, and Danger & Eggs with Aidy Bryant as D.D. Danger.

For parents:

  • One Amazon sign-in for the whole family.
  • A dashboard showing real reading progress next to other screen time.
  • Age-band controls, with one-tap approval when a child wants a story above their level.
  • A conversation starter written from the chapter their child just finished.
  • A weekly recap worth opening.

What We Delivered

One connected reading experience across phones, tablets and Kindle. Kids read more because the app feels like theirs. Parents stay close because they can see the reading happen and talk about it. Screen time became reading time.

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