An AI-powered companion app for children that blends storytelling, interactive voice experiences and child-safe design to explore how technology can foster empathy and creativity.

This project allowed me to bring to life something I had long envisioned – developing a mobile app from scratch. It gave me the chance to get hands-on again with code, a type of challenge I don’t often face in my day-to-day work, but one that I truly enjoy: seeing something come to life from nothing. It also helped me stay current with state-of-the-art technologies and explore AI APIs such as OpenAI (which I already used daily!) and ElevenLabs. Beyond the technical side, it became deeply personal. Using ElevenLabs, I recorded and preserved my own voice so I could tell stories to my 4-year-old daughter, even when I’m not physically there. Now, through Play Empathy, she can listen to me anytime she wants, in dynamic stories that grow with her imagination.

Play Empathy opens with a welcoming home screen, uniquely personalized for each child. It displays the child’s name, favorite colors, and chosen avatar, creating a sense of ownership and identity. The entire app dynamically adapts its color palette to match the child’s selected theme. Parents can manage and update settings safely through the settings menu, which is protected by parental control to ensure a secure environment. The first feature, Magical Stories, lets children: read classic tales; create new, personalized stories by writing their own idea or prompt; or simply choose “Surprise me”, allowing AI to generate a spontaneous and unique story. Each story is saved in the album, where it can be shared, listened to in the mother’s voice (me!), or transformed into a drawing to color and bring the story to life. The Drawing Album offers three brush styles and allows children to paint freely or color images generated from their stories. Once completed, any drawing can instantly become a puzzle, with adjustable levels of difficulty to match the child’s age and curiosity. Finally, the Treasure Map hosts a set of playful activities designed to boost memory, creativity, listening, and movement.

Project Details:

  • Flutter (Dart) + Android Studio
  • Spring Boot + Visual Studio
  • Google AI Studio
  • Render
  • GitHub
  • Sentry
  • OVH Cloud & Hostinger
  • Firebase