Proactive conversations that keep children safe & engaged while studying or having fun at home.
We believe that technology should cultivate our children’s curious natures through fun, exciting & educational interactions. That’s why we created Woogie: a voice-activated AI personal assistant for children ages 6+ that turns curiosity into personalized active learning. It does more than answer questions. Woogie engages children in conversations, interactive games and studying in clever ways, fitting their passions, interests, and hobbies. Come meet Woogie & support his arrival on Earth!
Turning curiosity into active learning
Woogie’s helping kids learn and discover what really matters to them in the world, both in terms of school topics and personal interests.
Children are curious by nature so when it comes to technology it should provide them with a lot of engagement and meaningful stuff to discover. Until now, technology has more often distracted children rather than educated them. It’s time we put technology to good use.
What can Woogie do?
Woogie’s mobile app for parents
Woogie understands the kids’ questions and curiosities and delivers answers in a witty and playful way, engaging them in conversations, interactions and even studying. Everything children need to discover about the world while feeling positively entertained.
Woogie in the Press
A safe way to introduce children to technology
Parents can access and control Woogie from virtually anywhere through a dedicated mobile app. They can stay up to date with their children’s education, get a deeper insight into their passions and interests and encourage learning by purchasing additional content. What’s more, they control what topics are and aren’t suitable for their children and ensure kids have access to the best and safest educational content out there.
Woogie, the 24/7 home companion
Woogie is the most fun upgrade to the children’s alarm clock. In the morning, he can play lively songs, make jokes and say positive things to help kids start their day with energy and optimism. He can also remind children to grab their stuff for school or set goals for the day ahead!
In the afternoon, Woogie detects the child entering the room when returning from school and proactively starts a conversation about what they learned, how was the day with their friends or delivers messages from the kid’s parents.
In the evening, Woogie can make study time fun. He is the best homework buddy to practice things like times tables, play quizzes about the Egyptians and have answers one could only find in encyclopedias. He will not do the kid’s homework for them, but he will be there, supportively.
At night, at a time decided by parents via the mobile app, Woogie is designed to act sleepy and less talkative, playing audiobooks or bedtime stories in order to get children ready for sleep. During the night, Woogie’s a soothing safety light, making children feel protected by their alien buddy.
For parents, Woogie is a trustful companion when they are away. He keeps them updated about their child’s activity and delivers voice messages from them to their child, always keeping a communication channel open.
The right, relevant answers for any curiosity
Woogie’s content comes from secured and curated sources. Woogie does not browse for answers through the wwww (whole world wide web), so your kid is safe from unsafe or undesirable information.
The content curation is in our control, the topics and frequency of delivery are in your control. Woogie is responsible for the delivery of content, which is personalized to each child’s interests and improves with every interaction.
Answers to questions like What’s the meaning of life? or Should I believe in God? are carefully written by our creative writer Joe – who’s a mother of two, specialising in kids stories and books. Woogie’s sense of humour and endless jokes about weird things like Do bees fart? are specially designed by Tiernan, a comedian at Comedy Club 4 Kids in London.
Since the answers are constantly improving, Woogie’s personality is always evolving.
Why kids love Woogie
Woogie has his own story and personality. He’s a fun little alien from outer space who lands on Earth to discover everything there is to know about the human race. In doing so, he needs children to help him, offering his knowledge and friendship in return. Always funny and optimistic, Woogie is here to grow and help children become smarter and better-adapted people.
Woogie knows an encyclopedia of things, he has opinions, he makes funny sounds and jokes, tells surprisingly interactive stories, he plays games and music, launches learning challenges and overall engages with children on a deeper level than a simple educational toy would. He’s a smart learning companion and a true friend.
Why Woogie is special
The more children talk to Woogie the smarter he and they become. The AI component gives children a personalized learning experience like no other, which kids are unlikely to get bored of.
No other device lets parents monitor & control the content their child accesses in such a discreet and reliable manner as Woogie does. The interactions adapt based on the child’s interest and their parent’s desire expressed through the mobile app settings.
Learning with an alien
Woogie’s educational approach is reverse learning seasoned with a lot of fun.
What does it mean? Woogie can access tons of information, but he needs the child’s help to understand what he can do with it. This way, they discover new things together, in a fun way in which they don’t even realize they learn.
Woogie’s full of new ideas, interesting facts, gamified learning modules, challenges and other features that were designed in a collaborative way by developers, educators, psychologists, parents and kids – all innovators in their field, all with awesome extraterrestrial minds.
The process of learning is designed to be interactive, adapted to the children’s passions and interests.
Social Rewards
We’re opening pre-orders now so we can produce the first batch of 1500 units and start an accelerated process of bringing more Woogies to as many children around the world as possible, in 2018.
You are ordering a limited edition Woogie featuring a special type of content that none of the future retail units will have.
Choose the best Woogie for your family and bring along more parents from your community to unlock more content – referral scheme available soon.
Security, Privacy, Technology
We took security very seriously from the very early stage. Actually, Bogdan’s children helped us a lot with being the first two users of our product. We had security framework and procedures implemented since Woogie was just a box of wires. In January 2017, we have been accepted as full members in the IoT Security Foundation and we’ve started to implement very strict development procedures.
Also, we are already working with KidsSafe for getting COPPA certification in October this year.
Prototyping Woogie
Woogie’s PRODUCT DESIGN was initially developed by a Romanian designer that used children’s help and feedback to give Woogie his first shape.
A year of improvements later, after retesting the design with kids, we hired an award-winning design studio where Duncan & Dan explored an entire family of Woogies using interaction design techniques.
Woogie’s new product design has a spacesuit shape, a bigger screen and lights integrated to better express its emotions.
For the MANUFACTURING PROCESS, we’ve locally produced 30 test units by using a silicone mould. We’ve learned a lot during this process and now feel ready to scale to mass production.
Testing Woogie with kids
Lots of kids have tested Woogie in real conditions both at home and through guided user interview sessions. And we felt so grateful seeing them happy, curious and surprised.
How it all started
We’re a team of parents, designers, and makers. One day, back in 2015, we decided to take real action in creating something that will make a difference for our kid’s education.
We are looking to build something highly relevant for the new kids generation, something safe and non-addictive, meaningful and fun, that will inspire them to explore more, develop their curiosity and expand their interest in the world around them.
Risks & Challenges
We promised ourselves not to start this campaign should we feel unprepared to engage 100% in its success (both in terms of funding and time delivery). We’ve done tons of research beforehand and dozens of tests with the MVP version of Woogie and, after a year of prototyping, we concluded that Woogie is ready to scale, both hardware, and software.
In terms of hardware, it’s important to know that some product design details may change over the course of development depending on the feedback we get from you and from the manufacturers. Otherwise, we assure you that we’ll keep you updated on any change. While all efforts are made to ensure timely completion of software functions, software development too can have unforeseeable delays which may result in some software functions being delivered as free updates after your Woogie is shipped.
We’ll try to be as transparent as possible and keep you informed throughout the entire process. We are aware that promising to deliver a big amount of hardware devices can cause many issues and concerns we cannot fully anticipate, but we are confident (and grateful) that you will continue to trust the aliens and be with us along this extraterrestrial journey. In the end, you become part of our awesome team of mentors, consultants, and industry advisors, contributing to Woogie’s success in delivering its promise to both kids and parents.
WHY CROWDFUNDING?
We started this campaign for you, the amazing parents who want to support Woogie and help us bring it in every curious child’s room. Crowdfunding was our launch option of choice because we wanted to reach parents across the world and land Woogie in as many homes as possible.
WHY SHOULD I BACK WOOGIE?
By backing Woogie you help us produce the first batch and develop it further. Since this is a pre-sale campaign, you also get a significant discount for pre-ordering. If you’re among Woogie’s first 100 customers, you can get him for only $79. During the campaign (and for a limited time only) Woogie will cost $99, while afterwards its price will be $109. Woogie’s retail price is $139.
HOW DO I ORDER WOOGIE?
Click the perk you want on Woogie’s Indiegogo page and fill in the pre-order information. You can safely pay with a credit card for your perk of choice.
CAN I RETURN WOOGIE IF I DON’T LIKE IT OR IF WE DON’T GET ALONG?
Yes. And we’ll send you your money back. Since we’re dedicated to offering your kid a memorable Woogie experience, in case you return it we would be super grateful if you answered a few questions related to our product to help us understand how we can improve Woogie in the future.
WHEN WILL I RECEIVE WOOGIE?
Woogie will be delivered to your home in February 2018. We’ll do our best to ship it sooner, but we don’t want to promise and disappoint you.
WHERE DO YOU SHIP WOOGIE?
We currently ship to the US, Canada, and the European Union.
IS WOOGIE’S MANUFACTURING CERTIFIED?
Yes. Woogie is an Arrow-certified device. Arrow is one of the biggest electronics distributors worldwide.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE PROJECT DOESN’T GET FUNDED?
You will get a full refund.
WHAT LANGUAGES DOES IT SPEAK?
For now, Woogie only speaks English.
WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DOES WOOGIE USE?
The artificial intelligence in Woogie understands each child’s interests and adapts the way content is delivered for the best user experience possible. Along text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology, we’re building the decisional mechanism in-house to select the right source of answers and the best NLP algorithms for categorizing the kid’s inquiries.
HOW DOES WOOGIE’S MEMORY WORK?
Woogie’s memory is so sharp thanks to machine learning algorithms. The more the kid interacts with Woogie, the better it will understand his interests and deliver a richer, more personal interactive experience.
IS THE CONTENT SAFE?
The content Woogie uses is created from scratch with the children’s educational needs in mind. The information Woogie delivers is safe and suitable for 6-12 year old children.
HOW IS WOOGIE FUN?
Woogie’s personality was created with help from a creative writer and a comedian for kids. They are constantly writing interaction use-cases and lines that are fun and positive. On top of that, Woogie accesses riddles, jokes, quizzes, games, interactive stories, plays music or streams podcasts for constant extra fun.
HOW IS WOOGIE BETTER THAN A TABLET OR A MOBILE PHONE?
Your kid will interact with Woogie through voice, thus helping him avoid the headaches or eye strains specific to long exposure to mobile screens. In terms of information, Woogie doesn’t search for answers on the whole world wide web, but in a collection of curated, verified and childproof content. There’s no risk of accessing mature, violent, unsafe or unsuitable information.
IS WOOGIE MOBILE?
Woogie is a fixed device. Unlike mobile devices running on batteries, Woogie is always connected to an electrical socket so that it’s impossible to lose, forget or misplace. Kids will always find it on their home desk or nightstand both in the morning when they wake up and in the afternoon or evening when they want to be entertained.
CAN CHILDREN TAKE WOOGIE TO SCHOOL?
Woogie is not designed as a mobile device. It’s best suited for a kid’s room. If you want other children to get to know Woogie, ask them to join your kid for a Woogie pajamas party. ☺ Together, they can take part in interactive stories, listen to music or compete in quiz challenges.
CAN WOOGIE BECOME BORING?
We hope not, since we’ve put all our effort into creating a super engaging user’s experience. Woogie is built to adapt to each child’s habits and interests to ensure personalized fun and interactivity. Of course, kids always shift interests, but we’re dedicated to delivering as many relevant and interesting things as possible through Woogie.
HOW CAN WOOGIE CONVINCE MY KID TO STUDY/LEARN?
Our content designers use gamification techniques to make learning fun. For instance, if a kid does well on a school-related quiz delivered by Woogie or if he is patient enough to discover the end of an interactive story based on school curriculum, Woogie unlocks special content for the child’s enjoyment. Parents also receive notifications via the dedicated mobile app if their kid refuses learning challenges.
DOES WOOGIE SPREAD FALSE OR NEGATIVE INFORMATION?
Woogie learns things related to your kid’s interests based on everyday conversations. Sure, kids may change their interests anytime, making old ones irrelevant or apparently false. But Woogie quickly catches up with them. As far as the encyclopedic content is concerned, Woogie always delivers true, verified, accurate information from constantly updated knowledge & learning modules. What’s more, Woogie is a true friend and never reveals the kid’s negative opinions on people, school or everyday matters to others.
CAN I ERASE WHAT WOOGIE LEARNS ABOUT MY KID?
Erasing data will make Woogie less relevant to your child, but yes, you can delete it anytime. Woogie will still be functional, although lacking its sparkling personality.
CAN WOOGIE BE HACKED?
We’ve been working closely with IoTSF ever since Woogie’s earliest stage of development, and are making security our top priority. Woogie is secured against attacks and we’re committed to preventing and treating such issues with maximum care and immediacy. During use, thanks to its updatable embedded software, the Woogie device will automatically sync and receive the latest security updates.
I HAVE TWO KIDS. CAN THEY BOTH TALK TO WOOGIE?
If two kids talk to Woogie, it will learn about both of their interests and deliver content specific to their preferences combined. We recommend both your children own a Woogie and customize it to their age specific preferences. Check out the combo perk we’ve created for this kind of situations!
HOW LONG CAN MY CHILD USE WOOGIE?
Since Woogie can be updated with premium content indefinitely, we’d say that Woogie is immortal and kids can use it as long as they want as long as they find it entertaining.
WHAT HAPPENS IF MY CHILD USES BAD LANGUAGE?
Woogie identifies swearing and cursing and tries to appease the child through positive advice or funny jokes. If any interaction based on foul language happens more than once, Woogie notifies the parents via the dedicated mobile app.
IS WOOGIE ADDICTIVE?
Kids adore Woogie, that’s for sure! But the ones who have tested it still love to interact with their real-life friends as well. ☺ Parents needn’t worry about device addiction. Woogie has a built-in feature that sends notifications to the mobile app when the child is spending too much time with it.
HOW CAN WOOGIE BEFRIEND BOTH A 6 Y.O. AND A 12 Y.O KID WHEN THEY HAVE DIFFERENT INTERESTS?
Woogie adapts to age specific interests. It can also be improved with premium content for certain ages, interests and school curricula. A 6-year-old’s Woogie will always be different from a 12-year-old’s.
HOW PROACTIVE IS WOOGIE?
Through the mobile app, parents can push more content related to a specific topic, making Woogie more proactive at stimulating the child in that area of knowledge. Be careful not to cross the indicated user’s experience limit though, as this will compromise your kid’s experience.
IS THE WOOGIE MOBILE APP FREE?
Yes. The mobile app is free for every parent who adopts Woogie.