Yuna Stories

Yuna is founded on a simple yet profound mission: to motivate children globally to embrace reading. We envision a world where literature is the premier choice of entertainment for young minds.

As a literary application, Yuna places children, their family members, and caregivers at the heart of every story, shifting the traditional view of childhood from merely a transient stage before adulthood to a vibrant period of play, learning, and imagination. In this space, Yuna acts as a catalyst, enhancing access to literature and fiction in an engaging and enjoyable manner. It fosters moments of connection, sharing, and creativity among children and their caregivers.

Recognizing the rapid advancements in technology, we have harnessed these developments to merge the timeless human fascination with storytelling with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. This fusion allows us to craft narratives from unique perspectives, providing a fresh and dynamic literary experience.

The Team Lead would be the founder and CEO of Yuna - Louis Markham. Louis is involved in ensuring that Yuna is on track to accomplish its vision of making reading the number one choice of entertainment for children around the world. 

Yuna is dedicated to making a significant and positive impact on children's lives globally through the power of reading. To achieve this, it is essential for us to continuously verify that our application is achieving its intended effects on enhancing children's literacy and engagement with literature. This validation process is not only about affirming the effectiveness of our solution but also about identifying areas where it may fall short and determining actionable strategies to improve its impact.

Given the centrality of this objective to our mission, prioritizing rigorous research and in-depth studies becomes indispensable for our company. We are committed to implementing a systematic approach to gather data, analyze user feedback, and study behavioral outcomes to ensure that Yuna is not just a tool for reading but a transformative educational experience. This research will help us refine our app, tailor our content, and innovate our methods so that we can truly enrich the lives of children around the world. This ongoing commitment to research and improvement underpins every aspect of our operations and is a core element of our strategy to foster a lifelong love of reading among the next generation.

Yuna creates personalised and interactive stories to engage children with reading and tackle difficult topics in a fun way.

The sobering reality is that the enchanting world of literary reading is gradually being overshadowed by the allure of digital and visual media. Recent statistics are alarming: Brazil has witnessed a decline of 4.6 million readers over the last four years, and a staggering 66% of students do not engage with texts longer than ten pages. This trend marks a significant cultural shift away from the deep, immersive experiences that traditional reading offers. Each successive generation is missing out on the myriad benefits associated with delving into a good book—enhanced cognitive development, sparked creativity, heightened empathy, and an enriched vocabulary, just to name a few.

In a rapidly evolving world where screens often dominate our visual and cognitive space, literary reading is losing its foothold, particularly among the young. At Yuna, this shift causes us considerable concern. We believe that without regular engagement in reading, children may not develop the necessary social and emotional skills that are crucial for understanding and navigating the complexities of the world around them. Literature not only entertains but also educates, builds character, and fosters an understanding of diverse human experiences.

What if there was a way to reclaim the magic of books and reintroduce the joy of reading to the younger generation? What if we could ignite a passion for stories that not only entertain but also teach valuable life lessons? At Yuna, we are driven by the possibility of reversing this trend, aiming to spark a resurgence in reading enthusiasm that could have profound effects on children’s development and on society as a whole. Through innovative approaches that blend traditional storytelling with modern technology, we aspire to draw children back into the enriching world of books, ensuring they gain the cognitive and emotional benefits that only reading can provide.

The Yuna app comprises of three sub-products, each blending traditional storytelling with artificial intelligence-generated content. This approach allows both children and their caregivers to immerse themselves in the narratives.

Upon initial access, parents and caregivers are prompted to complete a registration form for the children. This form captures details such as the child's imagined superpower, secret hiding place, hometown, eye color, interests, and personality traits. Subsequently, users can navigate through the three sections of the app.

The first section offers simple stories. These are generated based on selections made by the user, who chooses the protagonist and their faithful companion. Each story spans an average of five pages and includes representative images created by AI.

The second section features user-created stories. Users can select from a variety of scenarios, themes, and magical elements to craft a narrative. For example, one might choose a story about empathy set in a colourful desert inhabited by a wizard, or a tale of courage at a school with a talking dog. Like the first section, these stories also average five pages in length, with images generated by AI. We are currently expanding on this section to allow for parents to discuss difficult topics such as bullying, divorce and illness through the form of storytelling.

The third section consists of a sequence of interconnected stories. This journey begins in the world of Yuna, the app's character, a young jaguar who transforms into an enchanted being after an encounter with the mystical waters of an Amazon river. Readers must progress through the stories one by one, unlocking the next in the series to continue their hero’s journey. They will be able to make decisions at the end stories to ensure that the child stays engaged with the stories at the end of each chapter!

Yuna's offerings are fundamentally grounded in Foundation Research, drawing on many studies that underscore the benefits of reading to children, including cognitive development, creativity, the cultivation of values, and empathy.

In the process of developing the Yuna app, we have engaged in preliminary Formative Research, which has primarily involved usability studies, feasibility assessments, and interviews with parents both in Brazil and internationally. Although these efforts have provided valuable insights, there is a significant opportunity to delve much deeper into this research to enhance our understanding and improve our offerings.

On the Summative Research front, Yuna has experienced rapid growth since the launch of our alpha product. In just five months, we have amassed over 40,000 downloads and generated more than 100,000 unique books, with 30% of these receiving user ratings. This accumulation of data presents a vast resource for analysis, offering insights that could drive substantial improvements in our app. However, due to the sheer volume of information and the demands of ongoing projects, we have not yet been able to fully explore this extensive dataset. Prioritisation remains a challenge, but it is clear that a thorough examination of this data is crucial for informing future developments and strategies at Yuna.

In the initial stages of Yuna, preliminary research was essential in determining the concept's feasibility and the product's potential to positively influence child development in Brazil and beyond. This research confirmed the initial hypothesis that a technology-driven literary platform could improve children’s reading habits and development.

Following this validation, further research was conducted to guide product development, leading to the creation of the app's three current sections. These were developed based on a detailed analysis of the target demographic's requirements and preferences.

As a product-led company, Yuna prioritises innovation and iterative improvement, employing a systematic and empirical approach to product enhancement. Our development process is characterised by regular testing and user feedback analysis, with each update aimed at meeting the changing needs of our users. This continuous loop of feedback and adaptation is central to Yuna's strategy to remain a leader in educational technology and to support the engagement of children with reading.

Given our endeavor to integrate into the educational landscape through a synergy of literature and technology, we recognize the necessity for enhanced research and application support. Currently, the app provides numerous children with free access to literature, thereby fostering a reading habit. However, we are keen to explore further possibilities, whether Yuna might evolve into a tool for reader training, literacy enhancement, or another innovative application. Additionally, we aim to assess the app's impact on learning, cognitive development, and the enhancement of creativity and curiosity that arises from engaging with literature and stimulating the imagination.

There's also another important factor: Yuna's exponential growth. Over the past 5 months, Yuna has written 100,000+ unique stories to 20,000 monthly active users. And we are growing fast - we expect to write the next 100,000 books within a few weeks. The earlier we can refine our approach and product, the more we can positively impact children and families around Brazil and the world.

1. Does Yuna more easily create a reading habit for children vs traditional means?

2. Does Yuna help children engage with difficult topics through our Wellness Stories (e.g., bullying, divorce, illness)

From foundational research, we aim to improve our understanding of the impact that access to literature has on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. Additionally, it would be insightful to explore how habits developed in childhood can benefit current concepts of comprehensive health and contribute to future well-being.

Through formative research, we intend to deepen our knowledge of the usage and applications of the Yuna app to ensure enhancements and meet the social demands of both educational and home environments. To this end, conducting case studies, as well as interviews with parents, caregivers, educators, therapists, psychopedagogues, and experts in technology and education, could prove invaluable.

Through summative research, we aspire to gauge the impact we are creating, with the objective of establishing Yuna as a recognised educational platform.

You

Yuna was born as a fast-moving product-focused startup. As such, we are constantly researching data, gleaming insights, and refining our products based on what we learn. This potential research partnership with MIT is similar to what we do each day here at Yuna, though at a much higher standard! We are used to incorporating solutions to insights and outputs in days. We would see this project no differently!

As we are currently in the development phase and exploring various paths, we believe that the outcomes of this partnership and research will enable us to implement enhancements that will transform Yuna into an educational tool with a significant impact on children's quality of life. Our goal is for Yuna to offer a playful and engaging learning experience that contributes to the development of life-long beneficial habits.