Designing Rea - AI Bible Companion

Overview

Rea started with an open-ended design brief: what could a Bible application become if AI were built into the experience? There was no product model, information architecture or agreed role for AI. I had to turn the prompt into something people could understand, use and eventually build.

My answer was Rea (from רֵעַ Hebrew word meaning friend, companion, or neighbor): a Bible companion that could help someone while they read, explore or ask questions. I originated the product structure, Bible experience, Discover flow and Ask Rea interaction. That concept became the foundation for the application that later launched on iOS and Android.

Three ways into the Bible

I structured Rea abound four tabs: Home, Bible, Discover and Profile. Bible supported direct reading. Discover helped people find passages through situations such as joy, grief or encouragement. Home provided a daily starting point and access to recent conversations.

The structure was shaped around three broad groups: people exploring Christianity, new believers trying to understand Scripture and regular reader looking for deeper connections. These were based on informal research finding and pushed the product beyond a single book and chapter entry point.

AI that did not sit in its own corner

I explored several places for Ask Rea (the AI chat trigger). A bottom-navigation tab made AI feel bolted onto the product. A chat-first homepage made the app look like a chatbot with a Bible attached. Hiding it inside the verse selection menu made it too difficult to find.

I chose a floating control that stayed available across Home, Bible and Discover. It remained quiet until needed, then expanded into an input field. A submitted question opened a full conversation, while unfinished text stayed in place if the user dismissed the field and returned later.

Ask a question. Keep your place.

I wanted to support reading, not take it over. I considered showing AI response directly inside the Bible chapters, but that would have left the Bible reader too clustered.

Instead, questions opened in a separate chat. Pressing back returned the reader to the page they had come from. Rea could quote relevant passages inside its response, but the Bible itself remained undisturbed.

Carrying Scripture into the conversation

Selecting a verse opened a compact action sheet with Ask Rea as the first option. Choosing it attached the verse to the message removing the need to copy the text or type its reference. Users could ask a question, send the verse by itself for an explanation, remove it or add another passage.

I also designed Rea around a wider context-aware idea: the chapter or Discover category already on screen could become part of the question. That principle shaped the experience, even though the deeper automatic context behavior was not fully realized in the released product.

Familiar reading, a different way to discover

The Bible reader kept patterns users already understood. People could choose a book and chapter, swipe between chapters, switch translations, select verses, highlight passages and save bookmarks. I did not redesign familiar behavior simply to make the product look different.

Discover handled the less obvious starting point: I know what I am going through, but I do not know what to read. Discover had 12 categories around seasons of life, including joy, encouragement, love, sadness and grief. A user could open a category, explore relevant passages and continue into Ask Rea.

From one concept to a shipped product

As Rea expanded, I continued leading the information architecture and the Bible, Discover and Ask Rea experiences. I co-managed the component library, reviewed screens for consistency, built prototyped and walked engineers through behaviors that static mockups could not explain, including return position, passage attachments and draft preservation.

Rea launched publicly in November 2025. It was closed in June 2025 after it failed to achieve sustainable commercial traction. The product did not become a viable business, but the open brief became a real application. For me, the project proved that 0 - 1 design is less about producing more screens and more about defining the rules that allow an idea to become a product.

The strongest version of AI is not always the most visible one. In Rea, it worked best as a quiet layer around Bible reading, ready when the reader needed help and easy to leave when they did not.