Huma Legends
Learn English and Spanish vocabulary through illustrated stories from around the world.
- 2languages
- iOSnative app
- Mixedillustration · video · AI
The problem
Vocabulary apps drill words out of context. People memorize lists, forget them a week later and quit.
Huma teaches words inside a story: a legend from a real place, told with illustrators from different countries and, alongside them, video and AI-made pieces. Each new word appears where it matters.
What I built
- 01StoryA legend from a real place, one chapter at a time
- 02Words in contextTap any word, hear it, keep it
- 03ReviewSpaced repetition on what you kept
- 04ProgressStreaks and a map of visited places
Key decisions
Native SwiftUI instead of cross-platform
- why
- Reading and audio have to feel instant. Native gave the smoothest text rendering and offline playback with the least code.
- cost
- Android has to wait.
Convex as the backend
- why
- Realtime sync of progress between devices came for free, and the schema lives next to the client code.
- cost
- A smaller ecosystem than Postgres; I keep the data model simple on purpose.
Stories before features
- why
- Every release ships at least one new legend. The content is the product; features follow what readers ask for.
Illustrators from each place, not one house style
- why
- A legend from Ecuador should look Ecuadorian. Local artists bring that; video and AI-made pieces fill the gaps and keep the release pace.
- cost
- Less visual uniformity across stories, more coordination.
Architecture
- 01SwiftUI clientReader, audio, review engine, offline cache
- 02ConvexAuth, progress, story catalogue, realtime sync
- 03StripeSubscriptions and receipts
- 04Content pipelineIllustration, video, AI pieces and audio processed at build time
What I learned
Short, illustrated chapters beat long lessons. The first version had ten-minute stories; nobody finished them. Two-minute chapters doubled completion.