Hear Me Out

Contribution
UX/UI Design

App Developers
Minju Kim
Paul Cherry
Tyler Skluzacek

Year
2016

About
Hear Me Out is a mobile and watch app designed to help relinquish behaviors deemed as "poor speaking mannerisms." Using a timer to guide the speaker, the application will score the speaker on each of these three areas in order to give a baseline for the next practice session!

Overview
Developed at the 2016 Carlhacks – a 36 hour hackathon – and placed in the top 6. Hackathon hosted by Major League Hacking.

All you need to do is set your phone on the table in front of you, slap on an (optional) Pebble watch, click ‘start’, and practice your speech in privacy. This app helps prevent:

Distracting mannerisms. By implementing theorems of the great greek pythagoras, we’ve used the Pebble’s tilt sensors to detect sudden motions deemed inappropriate for a stage presence. The watch will record every case of (1) nervous counting fingers, (2) pumping pointer fingers, and (3) vicious waving of the arms. In addition, the user has the opportunity to turn on the ‘Feedback Mode’, which allows the user to receive haptic feedback reminders to ‘calm their hands’.

Low volume and fast-speech. Through Google Voice and Microphone-Equalizer libraries, we’ve recorded and provided feedback to users on their words-per-minute (if it’s too high OR even too low), and whether you should speak up. In the settings of the app, you have the opportunity to set up room size and ‘microphone’ parameters.

Vocal fillers. Ummmmm, annnnnnd, wellllll. Using the Google Voice API, we’ve been able to successfully identify many of these, even with moderate success with the hard-to-track uhhhhhh and ummmmm.

The most anxious of speakers suffer from a number of the following behaviors deemed as ‘poor speaking mannerisms’ by Business Insider Magazine – distracting mannerisms, low volume, fast speech, and vocal fillers.