The struggles of students in the United States to comprehend non-fiction science text are well documented. Middle school students, in particular, have minimal instruction in comprehending nonfiction and flounder on assessments. This article describes the development process of the Readorium software, an interactive web-based program being developed to assist students with comprehension of science text. The program incorporates research-based recommendations for effective reading comprehension suggested by the Institute of Education Science (IES). Efforts to turn the IES recommendations into a coherent software product that motivates learners are described, as is the process of incorporating student and teacher feedback to improve the usability of the product. Preliminary results suggest that the program operates efficiently, motivates students, and may substantially impact student comprehension of science text.