C.S. Lewis Company
Making C.S. Lewis part of everyday life.
I’ve led the C.S. Lewis Company’s subscription app from the first idea through to build. I shaped it around guided reading and reflection, giving people a way into Lewis’s work and a reason to come back.
Alongside the app, I designed, built and shipped bespoke software for the editorial team, giving them the tools to prepare Lewis’s writing for the product and carry on the work themselves.
The opportunity
Beyond Narnia
With a new Netflix Narnia film on the horizon, the company wanted to introduce more people to the author behind the stories. An app could help that first spark of interest grow into a lasting relationship with his wider work.
I’ve worked directly with the company and a producer of Netflix’s Narnia adaptation, owning the product from inception. That’s meant shaping the strategy, directing UX and design, and deciding what to build with the design and engineering team.
Journeys
A reason to come back
There was plenty to read. The harder question was why someone would return. Early concept testing showed we didn’t yet have a strong enough answer.
I focused the experience on guided Journeys. Readers would arrive with a question, spend time with a passage, then have space to reflect. Later prototype testing gave us enough encouragement to pursue that direction. Whether it brings people back in practice is still to be tested.
Personalisation
Start with the reading
One early idea was to map each reader’s development through the app. It was ambitious, but needed substantial data-science work and investment before we’d established the core reading experience.
I put it on hold and kept the first release focused on reading and reflection. Saving those reflections left room for personalisation later, without making launch depend on it.
I built the tools
the product needed.
40 books.
Thousands of letters.
An enormous body of evergreen writing needed to become passages, prompting questions and interpretations. Preparing it entirely by hand would not have met the project timeline.
Approach
An app built around passages from Lewis’s writing had to preserve every word as the books were broken down into quotes. I identified where the process needed to be deterministic, then used AI to help me build the scripts and checks that verified each passage against the source. I used generative AI for the interpretations, tuning them to the voice we wanted, with editors making the final call.
Built
I designed and built two connected tools: one for creating and reviewing passages, the other for authoring guided Journeys.
By handover, I had produced 432 passages across three books, with interpretations and reflection prompts for editorial review. I estimate this turned months of manual preparation into hours of production work. The result was bespoke software, built around the editorial team’s workflow and handed over for them to continue the work.
What changed
Ready for the next chapter
I handed both tools over to the client’s editorial team so they could carry on the work. Engineering delivered the content importer, completing the route into the CMS.
The app is still being built toward launch. We have a focused product direction and tools the editorial team can use today. Retention and subscription performance are the next things to test in the live product.