Publisher walkthrough
The publisher’s family-facing demonstration introduces the illustrated storybook and its interactive experience.
Historical project · 2012–2015
The Beginner’s Bible
Stories to read, touch, and play. A shipped iOS app that brought illustrated stories, narration, games, coloring, and puzzles together for young readers.
- My role
- Senior Developer of Mobile Technologies
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Technology at the time
- Objective-C · UIKit · AVFoundation · CoreGraphics
The experience
More than turning pages.
The app paired illustrated stories and narration with interactions children could explore: games, coloring, and puzzles. The content grew to more than 400 pages, making the work both an iOS application and a substantial interactive-content project.
I developed the iOS app and its technical architecture, working with design and editorial colleagues to bring the experience to the App Store. The challenge extended beyond implementing individual scenes: the team also needed a practical way to assemble and maintain them.
The engineering
Building the tools to build the book
I created StoryBook Builder, a visual authoring tool for placing artwork and configuring interactions and narration. Instead of treating each story page as a separate layout task in app code, the tool gave the team a visual workspace for assembling the content.
The original image below shows the authoring workflow: a selected object on the story canvas, with its interaction type and sound configured alongside it. The corresponding illustrated page is visible on the iPad.
That investment connected two parts of the work: the native app that delivered the experience, and the production tool that made a large collection of interactive pages practical to build.
Original demonstrations
From the project archiveThese recordings show the app as it existed at the time. Open a player to explore; the case study and images above stand on their own.
Early promotional film
Produced when the project had only three completed pages, this early film presents the creative direction. Andy Anderson directed the visual design and created the promotional video.
Watch the early promotional film
Games within the stories
My compilation shows examples of the in-app games: the interactive work that accompanied reading, coloring, and puzzles.
Watch the games compilation
People behind the project
A shared creative effort
My role covered iOS development, technical architecture, StoryBook Builder, and App Store submission and updates. Andy Anderson led the visual direction, alongside the design and editorial work that gave the stories their character.
This case study documents my HarperCollins work from 2012–2015. It is a historical account, not a statement of current app availability or device compatibility.