Smart Books
A magical children’s reading experience powered by AR
Brief
A series of children’s books in the Choose-your-own-adventure genre combining physical and digital media to help encourage reading.
Using a smartphone or tablet the user can scan book illustrations to enter the fantasy universe in Augmented Reality and solve puzzles.
Responsible for usability testing, quality assurance, UX writing, and translations.
About
Smart Books is a Danish startup founded in 2019 by game developer veteran Søren Jønsson. The product is physical books that you can read while scanning the illustrations with your device to solve puzzles and other challenges -powered by AR in Unity. When I first joined the company in 2021 I helped test and optimize the user journey of its first three publications. From its fourth book ‘The Wonder Sword’ and onwards I helped shape the overall user experience throughout development and translate them into English. Outside of working on the core franchise set in the ‘Peasoup’ fantasy universe, I have also worked UX on the company’s new coloring book and on work-for-hire projects.
Challenge
With a unique cross-media experience combining physical media and gaming, Smart Books offers a compelling, yet at times, complex user experience. With a small development team and a target audience of children in the age group of 8 to 12 years old early publications presented a few difficult issues post-publishing. While we could not change the prints, we could continue to improve on the accompanying app. Through vigorous real-world testing, experimentation, and refinement, we have taken the user experience of early entries in the series to a much better state and learned of new ways of engagement. ‘The Wonder Sword’ introduces a new satisfying item upgrade system and the coloring book presents whole new challenges with matching perspective, UVs and colors.
Mission, promotion, and feedback
With a mission of encouraging more children to read and helping those lacking motivation, the team has dedicated a large amount of effort to bringing Smart Books into schools. Danish YouTuber Rasmus ‘Lakserytteren’ Kolbe has invested in the company and boosted sales being a great fit with his young audience and loyal following. I have also participated in sales and promotion events for the company alongside Søren and Rasmus, including at teacher’s conferences and fantasy days. Critics praise the products for its unique approach to user engagement and its high replayability.
International expansion, translations & more
With its positive reception and the success of the third installment ‘The Gloom Dragon’, the concept is now expanding into more markets. I have been responsible for the Danish to English translations of Books 3, and 4 and the coloring book, which now also serves as a base translation for adapting the stories into other languages. We have also done work for hire, applying the concept and technology to other franchises, like for the ‘Bones Jr.’ pixie books series given out for the youngest at restaurant franchise Bones. Here, the interaction experience is simplified yet retains its layer of augmented reality and engaging storytelling.
