Kid Smart AI
AI-Powered
Digital Products
Kid Smart AI is an AI-powered education technology company. As the company’s sole product designer and first employee, I collaborate with the team’s technical founder and education experts to design AI products from concept to market launch.
My Role
Founding Product Designer
Technical Founder
Ron Potok
Date
October 2023 - Present
Responsibilities
UI Design (Figma)
Brand Identity
Marketing Design
Market Research
Site Analytics
Graphic Design
Customer/Investor Relations
Table of Contents
Challenge & Solution | Context | Discovery | Responsibilities
Product Solutions | Branding | Web Design | Marketing Designs | Pitch Deck | Update
Solution
Kid Smart AI: Child-Centric AI
Kid Smart AI’s solution is an AI company designed specifically for the unique needs of children.
Context:
Reading Rocket to
Kid Smart AI
Reading Rocket - Literacy Tool
Our team created a tool called Reading Rocket to help educators assess student literacy needs. This tool employs speech recognition technology, specifically trained on children's voices, to evaluate and classify reading errors.
Reading Rocket
Pivot to Kid Smart AI - B2B Multimodal AI Company
Our research led us to pivot and launch Kid Smart AI, a technology company that provides advanced speech recognition models tailored for children's education technology and entertainment industries.
We set up a system for companies to seamlessly integrate our fluency and pronunciation models into their existing products using our API.
Kid Smart AI
Provides step-by-step instructions on how to access our API.
Documentation created by our founder
Design Process
Designing Kid Smart AI
Responsibilites
As a founding product designer, my core responsibilities for Kid Smart AI involve product research and design. I also lead branding, marketing design, and investor/customer relations.
Product Design
Designed 5+ product features
Conducted market research and helped identify product-market fit
Conducted user research and design for Reading Rocket (see here)
Brand Identity
Designed company logo
Designed style guide
Crafted verbal identity and visual storytelling
Investor / Customer Relations
Crafted visual and verbal storytelling including campaigns, demos, and decks.
Developed an investor platform on Notion
Marketing
Designed company website
Designed business cards
Created pitch decks
Designed graphics for campaigns
Google marketing and SEO
Education Specialist
Contributed to data science intellectual property and improvements, ensuring the product's educational features were data-driven and impactful.
Discovery
We interviewed over 60 company representatives involved in different aspects of education. Personas ranged from school leaders, teachers, and education company founders to legal professionals.
Interview Findings | 60+ companies
RESEARCH FINDINGS
1
Demand for accurate child pronunciation recognition
2
Interest in personalized, engaging AI content
3
Safety and truthfulness in AI top of mind
4
Find a SoapBox Labs replacement
We analyzed the AI capabilities and revenue generated from child-focused use cases by top EdTech companies to better understand the ecosystem. Our findings revealed a growing demand for AI in EdTech, with leading incumbents increasingly partnering with or acquiring AI technologies since 2019. Notable examples include the acquisition of the child speech recognition leader Soapbox Labs and partnerships with Amira and OpenAI.
Competitive Analysis
The acquisition of leading child voice recognition company, SoapBox Labs, led to the sunsetting of its technology, forcing past customers to find a replacement. This created an opportunity for Kid Smart AI to step in with an easy-to-use API that could be integrated with just one line of code
Kid Smart AI B2B multimodal business model addresses unfulfilled demand for speech, text and image generation for children aged 13 and under.
TAM: We aim to focus on the unaddressed $1.4 billion revenue available in children’s AI that our research shows may reach $10 billion within the next 5-10 years. This amount is in relation to the $200B AI market for adults. See TAM analysis upon request.
Market Research
Bottom-Up Analysis by Industry Sector
Product Solutions
When launching Kid Smart AI, I worked on creatively solving problems related to investor and client relations.
Key Finding #1—How might we improve our clients’ understanding of our technology?
We found that executives and developers need a way to engage with our technology before further committing to trials and partnerships.
Solution: We designed the Playground, a space for clients to interact with our technology’s functionality, understand its accuracy, and download our API.
I designed a mockup of the Playground in Figma that I iterated on based on feedback from our technical founder.
Design Requirements
+ Choice to “view an example analysis “
+ The top should have a short explanation of an example use case of this technology- a brief explanation of a formative assessment
+ Ask for email to send them a link to the analysis
+ Ability to download the API output
+ How responsive do we want the drag image section?
Our founder exported the designs to AWS Amplify to further develop the code and launch the site.
THE PLAYGROUND
Fluency Model
Developers and executives can test the accuracy of our fluency model.
User inserts a reading assessment recording
User provides reading assessment text
User provides their email to receive an analysis via email.
Pronunciation Model
Developers and executives can view example analysis and API outputs.
Examples in a variety of contexts (ex. noisy background)
Analysis with accuracy rate
API output to easily switch from SoapBox Labs
Developers and executives can view examples of our pronunciation model’s accuracy.
Examples of challenging phonemes
Audio sample for reference
API output to easily switch from SoapBox Labs
Comparison to OpenAI
Developers and executives can compare Kid Smart AI accuracy to OpenAI for the child-centric use case.
Variety of examples including word recognition and phonemes
Available audio and transcript
Explanation of why this is important
Key Finding #2—How might we provide secure and accessible API keys?
When providing API keys to our clients, we wanted to prioritize security and ease of use, ensuring minimal barriers to entry.
Solution—We designed a customer dashboard
Our streamlined system allowed clients to efficiently generate secure API keys in a simple 3-step process.
Step 1
Clients receives a username and temporary password via email.
Step 2
Clients then log into the dashboard through our log in page.
Step 3
Client accesses a personalized dashboard where they can generate API keys, monitor usage costs, and manage team member access.
Key Finding #3—How might we keep investors informed about the company?
Investors needed an efficient way to stay informed about our company.
Solution—We designed an Investor Central page on Notion and a CRM dashboard on Monday
A centralized hub on Notion called Investor Central provided investors with relevant company information. A CRM dashboard on Monday allowed us to manage investor relations, organize contacts, and efficiently send and track mass emails.
Investor Central - Information Organization
I selected and organized the relevant information for investors to have access to.
Investor Central - Documentation Design
I designed the headers and formatting for all documents used in Investor Central to ensure consistency with the brand identity.
CRM dashboard - Information Organization
Managed investor relations, organized contacts, and efficiently sent and tracked mass emails using Monday’s CRM tool.
Branding
How might we create a brand tailored to executives and developers?
When transitioning from Reading Rocket to Kid Smart AI, our team had to redefine our brand identity and design a website tailored specifically for company executives and developers. Unlike Reading Rocket, which was primarily geared toward school districts and teachers, Kid Smart AI required a strategic shift to appeal to a more corporate and tech-savvy audience.
Solution: I designed a sleek yet refined interpretation of the classic children’s buiding block to symbolize our focus on creating technology for kids.
DESIGN GUIDE
Web Design
I created a website that explores the company’s brand identity, core offerings, and encourages users to build with us by submitting a contact form.
Marketing
Marketing Campaign: SoapBox Labs Alternative
We launched a marketing campaign to inform companies that we offer an alternative to Soapbox Labs, allowing them to switch seamlessly with just a single line of code.
I designed 4 marketing campaign designs to choose from.
The pop-up was ultimately the chosen design for the campaign.
Blog Posts: Feature Updates
We also created blog posts for each new feature, sharing them on our website and social media (e.g., LinkedIn). I designed the banner images for these posts and coded the tables on our website.
Business Cards
I designed business cards inspired by our mission and aligned to our branding. Our founder used these business cards when developing relationships at conferences.
Pitch Deck
I created and refined each version of our investor and client pitch decks as the company progressed. See pitch deck upon request.
Updates
We are currently in trial with 5+ education technology companies and children’s toys and games companies with contracts pending.