Whispp - Developing a concept to make data collection more engaging

2020 • UX design

For many stutterers, having a phone conversation is a dreadful task. Whispering reduces the frequency of stutters drastically; however, whispering while having a phone conversation might feel awkward. A Dutch startup created a solution: Whispp. Whispp is an app that uses AI technology to convert the stutterer’s whispering voice to a “normal” voice in real-time. We were tasked to develop a design concept to improve the overall user experience of the app.

How it works

The AI system needs to be trained to properly transform the user’s whispering voice to a normal voice. Their current prototype contains a voice-record functionality. The user must record a short fragment of themselves speaking, which is used as input to train the system. The more input the system receives, the better the system will become.

Design goal

We conducted interviews with current users of the app. The interviews revealed that training the AI was perceived as the most cumbersome task throughout the app. “It’s boring” and “It feels awkward to just randomly speak without purpose” were the feedback we received. Improving the experience of this task would have the biggest impact on the overall user experience of the app.

Developing an interactive avatar to make the process more engaging

Through several ideation sessions, we came up with the idea to personify the AI system and add gamification elements to make the task more engaging.

The AI system was personified as an interactive avatar “that lives” inside the app. The training was repackaged into small conversations that you have with the avatar. The more you speak to the avatar, the better it will learn how your voice sounds and mimic it better. Since the user is the avatar’s only friend, it will get lonely when you ignore it for too long.

The avatar can convey basic emotions such as happiness and sadness (if you ignore it too long). It also blinks regularly to make it seem more alive.

Building the navigation flow

We now had established a general concept. The next step was to see how we could combine this concept with the rest of the existing features into a logical navigation flow.

We also upgraded the visual design of the application. We created a color palette based on the brand color of Whispp and aimed for an experience that felt light and friendly.

Credits

Bryan Yip – Design
Wen Ying Chang – Design