As Story Time’s popularity continued to grow, so did the demand for more stories. We saw this demand as an opportunity to use the platform to further differentiate Portal from other Smart Home devices. But in order to do this, we would need to grow our content library in a fast, yet scalable way. With that in mind, 2019 was the year we tripled our content library – with 14 additional stories. And with Portal set to launch internationally, we made sure to include stories that were relevant to international markets, while also uncovering new and fun ways to bring families closer together through the magic of storytelling, no matter where they are.

Story Time on Portal uses AR effects, music and animation to bring the magic of in-person storytelling to life, from wherever you are. In 2019, we grew our content library three-fold, by partnering with publishers to bring beloved children's books to life, while also adapting stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. These two stories resonated with international audiences, but were in need of a 21st-century update. Time was spent rethinking all aspects of the stories: from animation and design to the characters themselves. Gone were the naive little girls that people were used to, and in their place were adventurous young women. We also toned down the darker, more traditional folklore aspects of the stories, replacing them with lessons for a modern audience. So instead of Wolf eating Grandma, Wolf learns a valuable lesson about being proud of who you are, no matter what you look like.

Portal’s goal has always been to connect people. With that in mind, 2019 was our chance to build out a robust story library, giving families even more opportunities to experience the joy of reading stories together, no matter where they are. It’s always been paramount that Story Time never feels like ‘screen time’, which is why every story includes interactive moments for both the reader and the listener to take part in. When families are engaged in Story Time, they aren’t merely consuming content - they’re active participants in the story. We then helped people get into character with playful AR masks that even include voice modulation. So now when you’ve got an AR wolf mask on, you don’t just look like the Wolf, you sound like it, too.

Portal’s goal has always been to connect people. When families are engaged in Story Time, they aren’t merely consuming content - they’re participating with each other in the story. With that in mind, we adapted stories to include interactive moments for both the reader and listener to take part in, and helped people get into character with playful AR masks that even include voice modulation.

We created these immersive environments, rich animations and AR effects in SPARK AR. This required us to work within the constraint of small file sizes to reliably run across all Portal devices and to establish a production pipeline that would support hundreds of builds with over 10,000 chapter iterations. Our development process allowed us to polish creative, work through technical restraints, and hit our goal of increasing the content library to 20 total stories.

Story Time is supported on all five different Portal devices, as well as Portal-to-Messenger and Portal-to-WhatsApp calls, and all 14 new stories are currently available to all Portal users. Two of the new stories – Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks – have been translated into seven different languages. Now, people across the world won’t just read the story, they’ll become the story.

In the end, we grew our content library 3-fold with 14 new stories (20 stories in total). Two of which were translated into seven different languages. Our 2019 story releases have correlated with an increase in Story Time engagement, as well as story play count. Reviews of the new stories, along with the overall experience have been positive.