What sparked the idea for Luna?
Luna was born from a simple, personal truth: we’re three dads to curious, creative kids with a love for stories and an eye on how tech might shape their world. At a time when AI is mostly focused on automation, we saw an opportunity to do something different. We wanted to build a product that was emotive and rooted in one of the most magical moments of parenting: storytime.
Luna started as a side project between friends, aiming to help parents like us nurture creativity and build deeper bonds through storytelling.
How did your design background shape Luna?
Coming from high-end design and advertising, we’ve seen firsthand how AI is disrupting creative industries. That made us especially thoughtful about how we approached Luna. We didn’t want to replace the beautiful, timeless stories we grew up with. We wanted to complement them.
Luna isn’t here to take the place of classic children’s books but to offer a new kind of storybook experience. One that’s interactive, personal, and shaped by the child’s world. We focused on craft. Every touchpoint, from illustration to the interface, is designed to feel warm, human, and joyful.
Why is co-creation so important?
We didn’t want children to be passive readers. We wanted them to be creators. Co-creation gives kids agency, pride, and ownership of their ideas. It brings parents into the process, making storytelling something shared from a young age, not just handed down. That dynamic is where Luna really comes to life.
How does story generation work?
Parents and children are guided through a few simple prompts. They imagine their characters, settings, adventures, and something new or surprising from their everyday life. Luna then brings those ingredients to life using OpenAI’s latest visual and language models. It generates age-appropriate stories with bespoke illustrations in seconds.
Unlike other AI-generated books, no two Luna stories are alike or picked from pre-created templates. Every tale is genuinely one of a kind.
How did you make AI feel warm and human?
First, Luna is designed to enhance the ritual of reading together, not replace it. The stories use parables, gentle narratives, and custom artwork to create a sense of wonder.
We’ve also implemented filters to block mature or inappropriate content. Luna is deliberately designed to be used with parents and to support parent-child bonding, not as a solo app for children.
Finally, the behaviors and interface take cues from the physical world. For example, the moon icon follows the real phases of the moon each time you open the app. The design draws inspiration from physical books, from the screen layout to the sounds of turning a page.
What has surprised you about how people use Luna?
We’re learning new things every day. One lovely behavior is how parents narrate the stories aloud, occasionally tilting the screen to show their child the illustrations. It’s almost like a digital version of turning the page.
It brings a tactile, emotional element back to the screen. We’ve also seen children revisit the same characters or places from their real lives, essentially creating episodic story arcs. It’s a beautiful blend of imagination and memory.
What role does storytelling play in child development?
Storytelling has always been a powerful tool for emotional regulation, empathy, and learning. We designed Luna to reflect each child’s world, using their ideas, names, and daily experiences as building blocks.
That level of personalization boosts engagement and helps children see themselves in the stories they create. It’s not just about reading. It’s about being heard and represented.
While this is important, engagement in reading is under threat, with reading enjoyment at a 20-year low. Only 32.7% of UK children say they enjoy reading, and just 18.7% read daily. To close the reading engagement gap, we need innovative ways to capture their curiosity and imagination.
What did you learn about designing for kids?
Less is more. Kids don’t need flashy visuals or gamified content. They respond best to meaningful interactions.
We kept the interface simple and adult-led so the story creation happens through conversation and imagination, not tapping or swiping. It’s slower by design because the moment matters more than the speed.
Where is Luna heading next?
We’re exploring ways Luna can support neurodiverse children and SEN (Special Educational Needs) audiences.
We’re also experimenting with new models that integrate narration, sound, and even video so children can hear or watch their stories in new ways. At the same time, we’re planning to expand beyond iOS and bring Luna to more families, more platforms, and more stories.
What’s the broader mission?
We built Luna for our own families, but we hope it resonates far beyond that. In a time when screens are often isolating and AI can feel impersonal, Luna is a quiet rebellion. It proves that tech can bring us closer, not pull us apart.
Ultimately, we hope Luna helps reshape how families connect by fostering creativity, conversation, and curiosity in the age of AI.
