Nella: From AI to ZZZ

Welcome back! It’s In Case of Inspiration from Five & Done—a series of Case Study Projects and stories that provide insight into ideas we believe are better digital experiences and solutions. Each Case Study experiments with new tools and methods for building emotionally evocative stories and experiences.

In this Case Study, we’ll introduce you to a brand new product our studio built from the ground up and explore the new “methods and materials” we used along the way.

Let’s jump in.

Never Get Comfortable

We’ve been in the business long enough to know you’re never done learning and growing. When we say “long enough”, we mean we’ve got designers who harken back to the “good old days of Flash”. From Flash, they evolved through Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, Xd, Figma…and now AI?

ChatGPT caused the world to take a collective seat when it launched in April 2023. Some people were amazed, others were stressed, and many had no idea what to think. I’d like to think we fell somewhere between the former and the latter. But like I said, we have experience evolving, and this would be another evolution. The reality is, in our line of work the day you stop learning is the day you stop being relevant.

We’re a design & technology studio, so when AI started smashing rules/boundaries that had existed for years, we didn’t want to sit idly by on the sidelines. We didn’t want to wait for people to tell us, “this is how we’re going to use AI now.” We wanted to have a say in defining that future. Frankly, we were itching to figure out what we could do with it.

New Parents

Around this same time, we had a bunch of people becoming first-time or second-time parents. ON PURPOSE. Call ’em crazy, call ’em saints, the truth of the matter is that they’re all exhausted.

You know what exhausted people do? They have really good ideas. Something about being uninhibited enough, but lucid enough…

SO, like I said, from that exhaustion struck inspiration — what if I could use AI to help me put my kid to bed?

On the surface, that’s a loaded question. What parent wants to mix Skynet and the meaningful moments of tucking your child in to bed? But taken from another perspective, what parent wants to be come a SuperParent™️? (Hands shoot up across the world.)

So let’s take another look at the question — what if I could use AI to help me put my kid to bed? As most parents know, or will find out, little kids love a good bedtime story to help them fall asleep. And there’s nothing, I repeat nothing, more important than making sure that little human gets their full sleep. Well rested kids > cranky and tired kids is a law as old as time itself.

That became the nugget we set out to explore–how could we help parents with their tired children and familiarize ourselves with AI at the same time?

Three Great Products

Today, we’re proud to introduce you to three great products. The first is a superb new word game. The second is a fantastic new graphics generator. The third is a fun new collection of short stories.

So, three things:

1. A superb new word game

2. A fantastic new graphics generator

3. A fun new collection of short stories

A word game. A graphics generator. A collection of stories.A word game. A graphics generator. A collection of stories.

Are you getting it? These are not three separate things. They’re one thing. And we call it Nella.

Nella is the app to create beautiful bedtime stories with your little ones.

With Nella, parent and kid choose the story blocks together, then AI generates the story. For the first time, every story is an adventure for both kids and parents. For the first time, parents get to feel a sense of childlike wonder at where this story will go. It’s not the same story being read over and over anymore (nothing wrong with that, we all have our favorites!); it’s a new story with new lessons, new ideas, and new memories to be made.

Once it became clear to us what we were building, it was just a matter of bringing it to life.

Show (and Tell).

They say a picture is worth a thousand words…so I’m gonna zip it.

At the core of it, Nella builds on the concept that every story has three core pieces: a main character, a setting, and a plot.

Parents (and their little ones) get to select one of each, like a mad libs, and generate their very own, personalized bedtime story. The images barely do the experience justice.

Now, you’ve got an endless library of stories right at your fingertips. You can create countless new stories every night, or stick with your favorite character and create different stories about them. It’s up to you, and it’s never been more fun.

Back To School

Building Nella was definitely venturing into unknown territory for us. Luckily, unknown territory is our favorite place to explore. It’s how we’ve learned new skills in the past, and it’s how we’ll continue to learn going forward.

If you want something you’ve never had before, you need to do something you’ve never done before.

With many of these newer tools and resources, it’s early days and the maps are still being charted. We jumped in because we wanted to have a hand in staking the path forward.

To create Nella, we built with four new tools: React Native, ChatGPT (AI), Stable Diffusion (AI), and Rive:

• React Native…for the mobile application (iOS + Android)

• ChatGPT API…for story generation

• Stable Diffusion (AI)…for image generation

• Rive…for interactive animations

• Webflow…for a landing page

  
  

It’s Bedtime

If you’re still with me by the end of this, maybe you’ll download Nella! We’re quite obsessed with how it turned out, but I guess that’s like any parent being biased toward their baby.

Only this time, it’s cool if you want to give us some feedback. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Otherwise, here are some baby photos of the folks that built this fine app. Don’t you want to download their app and make them feel good?

Download Nella

P.S. — here’s an index to other articles in this series.

1. Nella: From AI to ZZZ

2. Putting The Proof Into The (E-Commerce) Pudding

3. Build-A-Bronco: Finding The Right Look

…and much more to come!

Is there something you don’t see here, that you wish a Case Study existed for? Would you like to partner with us for a Case Study? Drop us a line at contact@fiveanddone.com.