Cuddlebook
An app for bilingual families to read stories together
Designed, developed, written and published independently by me.
Overview
Cuddlebook is a mobile app created from a personal desire to teach my children my second languages (Cantonese).
The app is filled with short stories, perfect for any time of day, especially as part of a bedtime routine.
It features AI-powered text-to-speech to help both parent and child learn the correct pronunciation of any given word or phrase.
Technical
The app is built with Expo React Native and uses React Native Elements for UI components.
The stories themselves are written, however, there's the offline translation process uses ChatGPT.
The decision to translate offline means the translations can undergo QA (which is outsourced) before committed to the app source code.
The text-to-speech backend is implemented as an Azure Functions app, with a custom caching layer. I gathered that there would be sporadic use, hence the "severless" backend to keep cost and maintenance down.
