Project Overview

Centred on the concept of “A Small Ball, A Big World”, the Smart Story Reader introduces an innovative early education solution for children aged 0–12 and their families. This product breaks the functional boundaries of traditional story readers by merging a toy-like spherical design with advanced educational technologies. Featuring speech recognition, interactive image reading, tiered content delivery, and Deepseek semantic interaction, it builds a comprehensive learning system that adapts to various scenarios and user needs.

Organisation

Shanghai Himalaya Technology Co., Ltd.

Project Brief

Amid growing challenges such as scarce parental companionship and the limited functionality of conventional early educational devices, the product is inspired by Himalaya’s original children’s IP character, “Bobo”. Its smooth, edgeless spherical shape, skin-friendly silicone material, and a cheerful orange-and-white colour scheme are tailored to children’s natural gripping habits while softening the seriousness often associated with learning.

Integrating the functions of a story reader, reading pen, and Bluetooth speaker, it also comes with extensive preloaded offline content and supports Deepseek-powered multi-turn dialogue for storytelling and encyclopedic Q&A. With 32GB of internal storage, connection to Baidu Cloud, and a 1.2-meter drop-resistant structure, the device combines practicality with emotional value, establishing itself as a new-generation educational companion.

Project Innovation/Need

Aesthetically breaking away from the mechanical feel of traditional early educational devices, the product is modelled after “Bobo”, the soundwave sprite from Himalaya’s original show, Little Minds, Big Mysteries. Its smooth, rounded ball shape—combined with soft, skin-friendly silicone material and a warm orange-white colour—reduces the formal and rigid feel of traditional educational devices and highlights its role as an educational companion.

Functionally, the device combines multiple advanced features: optical recognition capable of identifying more than 2,000 books, Deepseek-powered multi-turn dialogue for storytelling and encyclopedic Q&A, and tiered content delivery guided by a scientifically designed age-specific curriculum. It moves beyond the traditional one-way output model and establishes a two-way interactive model that encourages listening, reading, questioning, and playing.

Design Challenge

To overcome children’s natural resistance to structured learning, the product adopts an animated IP character and toy-like design. Its smooth, rounded ball shape—combined with soft, skin-friendly silicone material and a warm orange-white colour—reduces the formal and rigid feel of traditional educational devices and positions itself as an emotionally engaging interactive companion in children’s everyday play.

To meet the essential requirements of children’s products, engaging design, safety, and durability, the device adopts a toy-like spherical form that stimulates interest and encourages play. Its smooth, edgeless shape greatly reduces the risk of bumps and scrapes during use. Tested to withstand drops from 1.2 meters, it delivers reliable safety and long-lasting enjoyment.

Sustainability

Built around a stress-free interaction model, the device encourages self-directed learning and eases early education anxiety. It promotes the concept of “play-based learning” as a new educational philosophy, helping lay a strong foundation for children’s mental well-being.

It also reduces parental pressure through intelligent companionship, fostering high-quality parent-child interaction and helping working parents balance family and work. With its play-based early education model, the product redefines children’s early educational device, shifting focus from “feature stacking” to “emotional companionship”, inspiring the industry to explore new child-centred models that integrate education and play.