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Role UX/UI Designer | Project Academic study
Timeline 8 week period | Tools Pen, paper, Figma and Invision
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Project Overview
What is Speechflow?
What is Speechflow?
Speechflow helps people who stammer to take control of their speech through various warm-ups and exercises with the all important instant feedback. This aims to make them more aware of their thoughts and feelings, maintain a positive mindset and be disciplined to achieve a better flow of speech.
Identifying the Problem Space?
I have a stammer and it’s ok!
I have a stammer and it’s ok!
Many people and myself included who stammer, can experience a hard time speaking in our everyday lives. Unpredictable situations such as being at work, hanging out with friends, being around family and general everyday situations, can make people who stammer feel out of their comfort zone, less prepared to speak and harbour feelings of negativity and shame.
My Objective
The Goal
Provide people who stammer with a solution that helps them challenge, strengthen and improve their speech over time thus enhancing their
quality of life, increasing their confidence and readiness for their next speaking situation.
quality of life, increasing their confidence and readiness for their next speaking situation.
The Design Process
The Double Diamond
To facilitate and guide my creative process during the 8-week timeframe, I followed the double diamond model which took me through 4 stages of convergent and divergent thinking. This helped me to organise my thinking and embrace ambiguity through an agile and iterative process.
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Discover
Empathise | Conduct primary and secondary research | Analyse key themes
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Empathise through gathering research
Understanding the landscape
To empathise with people who stammer, how they feel, think and behave, I did secondary research to give me a boarder understanding of what they are dealing with.
What do I understand now?
My findings show that stammering can make it difficult to communicate with other people especially when out of control. Unfortunately it can affect a person’s quality of life and interpersonal relationships. Stammering can also negatively impact job opportunities and mental health. I can assume that people who stammer are generally not prepared for speaking situations and mostly get caught out when spontaneous conversations arise.
This results in not having control of their speech and this makes communication an everyday challenge. Stammerers are left feeling negative and avoid putting themselves in situations to limit those feelings.
This results in not having control of their speech and this makes communication an everyday challenge. Stammerers are left feeling negative and avoid putting themselves in situations to limit those feelings.
Empathise through conducting interviews
Understanding the people
Now it was time to talk to some real people who have stammers. Conducting 1:1 interviews, through a series of open ended questions, my objective was to:
• understand the current experiences of those who stammer
• how stuttering impacts their everyday lives
• what obstacles they face and how they overcome them
• how stuttering impacts their everyday lives
• what obstacles they face and how they overcome them
Key themes from interviews
Affinity mapping the data collated from the interviews into pain points, behaviours and motivations, 3 main insights arose:
Insight 1
Practising
speech exercises
speech exercises
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People who stammer need to do speech exercises everyday to maintain a good level of speech. Over time this can sometimes become a chore, coupled with not seeing any progress, however small, can lead to procrastination.
Insight 2
Positive mental mindset
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People who stammer can often be weighed down by negative feelings about themselves. Everyday speaking situations can linger on in their minds especially if they do not go too well and those thoughts can be harmful to their mental health.
Insight 3
Setting goals
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People who stammer can feel frustrated when they are not able to say what they want to say. The task of reaching and maintaining that level can sometimes be overwhelming and the need to expand comfort zones can challenging.
From these insights, I have chosen to explore insight 1 - practising speech exercises. Practicing builds the foundation blocks of strong speech and from here people who stammer grow in confidence, positive feelings and feel more ready to speak in control.
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Define
Synthesise and humanise research findings | Determine opportunity
of intervention
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of intervention
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Primary Persona
Meet Amari
Meet Amari
Amari Chima is a fusion of my research and target users pain points, behaviours, motivations and goals. This helps me to empathise further with the wants and needs of people who stammer and from here I can define the beginnings of a targeted solution to help address the problems they face.
What does Amari currently do to prepare his speech?
To empathise with Amari, as someone who has a stammer, I created an experience map, showing how Amari currently prepares for a presentation to visually reveal areas of contention at each touch point and hopefully an area of opportunity to intervene at.
Finding an opportunity
From Amari’s experience map, the opportunity of intervention I will focus on is the preparing and practicing stage. From my interviews, this was the main pain point people who stammer struggle with.Amari can have a better chance of controlled speech if he practices and trains his voice in a more disciplined way, leading to building strong speech skills. This will then allow Amari to be better prepared for speaking situations.
With my exploring narrowed right down to the best opportunity of intervention, I can now frame my design question...
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How might we
How might we
help people who stutter improve their everyday speech in order to increase their readiness, confidence and positive feelings about themselves?
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User Stories and Epics
What will this app do?
Deciding on what this solution can do to help meet Amari’s goals, I authored 30 user stories to help explore what potential functionalities could add value to the design solution.
Grouping these user stories into epics, overarching functionalities were identified which allowed me to select which functionality should be designed first to help Amari achieve his goals.
Primary and Secondary Task Selection
What does Amari want to do?
Moving forward with the epic ‘Speech Exercises’, this epic lends itself to answering my HWM statement and aligns with the opportunity found in Amari’s experience map. Further expanding this epic, I selected the task ‘Analyse my speech’, as this aligns with Amari’s pain points and goals. Now I can build the primary task flow and shape his user experience.
Task 1: Amari wants to have his speech analysed after completing a speech exercise so he can see where he needs to improve in his speech.
Once Amari has completed an exercise and received recommended feedback, he can now go on to complete an exercise from this section. This is to further motivate Amari to continue the process of working on his speech. This will make up the secondary task flow.
Task 2: Access recommended speech exercises to continue working on all aspects of my speech.
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Develop
Ideate and iterate | Set the functions of the solution
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Sketching
Taking direction from the inspiration board I put together, I sketched out ideas, to explore what the experience could look like and how it would function. Making sure sure to refer back to the task flow, I combined different design components in a few iterations of each screen and selected the best set to finalise my solution sketches, ready to turn into wireframes.
Wireframing
Transforming my solution sketches into low-fidelity wireframes, I now have a better idea of the main components, information hierarchy, setting the user experience and overall screen flow to build the structure of the app. The aim is to create a design to help Amari accomplish his goals in the best possible way.
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Test and iterate | Brand the solution
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User Testing Rounds
With a working prototype, ready to be tested by real users, the aim here is to gather valuable feedback on how they interact with the prototype and whether the tasks can be achieve through the design solution. This will help me uncover opportunities for improvement and understand my Persona’s behaviour in
real-time.
real-time.
After 2 rounds of user testing with 5 testers each round, I collated and synthesised the feedback and I was able to determine that my task flows were not a problem for my users to complete.
Design amends were inevitable such as language, iconography and screen layout which informed the iteration stages to further increase the usability of the design solution.
Defining the Visual Identity
Developing a visual identity for my app solution, I set a few brand values to help define the look and feel. I wanted the app to represent what I want people to feel and aspire to when using the app. I took into consideration the colour palette, typography, and design of a wordmark.
The name speechflow comes from what the end result will be, the user working towards making their speech flow.
Introducing Speechflow.
Helping people who stammer to...
• Challenge themselves, to transform their speech.
• Practice, train and develop their speech through recored exercises.
• Practice, train and develop their speech through recored exercises.
• See and hear through feedback, what areas of their speech needs work.
• Learn to control and maintain a level of eloquent speech flow over time.
• Say what you want to say, when you want to say it with no holding back.
Hover over the image below and
see how it works :D
see how it works :D
Responsive Marketing Website
To promote my app solution to my target audience, I created a responsive marketing website to communicate how the app works, the features and how they help the user and some testimonials from other who have tried the app.
Multi Platform Design
Thinking about how users of my app can incorporate speech exercises into their everyday lives, I decided to translate some parts of my app for smartwatch usage. Many people use smart watches on a daily basis and breathing exercises lends itself well to being used on a smartwatch.
Users can conduct breathing exercises anywhere while on the go and can be used to bring their speech back under control as situations arise during the day. This hopefully will create a sense of proactive ownership and over the progression of their speech flow.
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Conclusion
Next steps | Key learnings
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What’s next for speechflow?
Speechflow is a first step in taking control of ones speech and to facilitate this, the aim is to make available more speech exercises to allow the user to further work on their journey to better speech control.
To maintain a high level of quality to the exercises, these will be researched and tested to make sure they give the best outcome for my users.
As design for voice becomes even more wide spread, Speechflow would sit perfectly in this area. My hope would be to have the option of voice activated interaction, where the user would interact with Speechflow though voice, making the experience more interactive and accessible.
Another aspect I would like to explore would be conversational A.I and how it can possibly learn a users speech pattern, hold natural conversations and be a personal coach with on the spot feedback for the user. Not everyone has access to people during the day and I think this would be beneficial to my users.
Tarot Cards of Tech
Considering the impact and reach Speechflow could have on the wider community based on Artefact's Tarot Cards of Tech, this was a good way for me to see how speech can affect people indifferent ways.
I can see Speechflow being used in the early learning sector. Stammering is usually first diagnosed in children and so this would be a more fun way to engage them in working on their speech without it being made a big deal.
Similarly when accidents affect the speech area of the brain, Speechflow could be used to aid in the recovery of a patient. Progress can be tracked through low intensity to high intensity exercises.
Key Learnings
Overall, during these intense 10 weeks, I have been able to...
1. Experience the full UX design process, from exploring a problem space to realising a finished digital product.
2. Understand and apply agile design thinking methods that centre the user at the heart of the why, the what and the how.
3. Listen and communicate through collaboration with my peers.
During this process I have learned to...
1. Understand my users to inform my design solution.
I learned that users are my best resource for information. Seeing the problem space through their experiences allowed me to emphasis and better understand the obstacles they face to help create a solution that is geared towards meeting their goals.
I learned that users are my best resource for information. Seeing the problem space through their experiences allowed me to emphasis and better understand the obstacles they face to help create a solution that is geared towards meeting their goals.
2. Being open to change.
The process is not linear. Embracing uncertainty and ambiguity can widen the scope of what is possible. Utilising feedback an insights from my users helped me to focus more on their needs rather than my own ideas, pushing my design solution in a more user-centred direction.
3. Function over aesthetics
Coming from a graphic design background where design is more associated with how something looks to now, through this project, thinking about design in terms of problem solving, really challenged me to look at how design can function in a way that impact peoples' lives and experiences. It's not just about how something looks but how it performs.
Learning to control stammering is a topic that I am very passionate about and through this project, I wanted see how a digital product could be developed to help such a cause. Not only that I challenged myself at each stage of this project with my speech from initial introductions to interviews with users to demo day. I can say that I am proud of myself for pushing my comfort zones and not holding back.
JM.