Atavoice Major Update

Our biggest and most important finding was that users prefer a self-paced practice environment instead of a guided one. While the original intent of curriculum mode was to encourage daily practice, almost nobody used it that way. There were a few reasons for this:

• Practice felt monotonous and boring
• Practice didn’t feel applicable to real world situations
• Users felt like they didn’t need to practice anymore after awhile, so having a year-long practice plan was overwhelming

We saw evidence of that in terms of Voice Test being used overwhelmingly over Curriculum Mode. Most users did not use Curriculum Mode at all.

Replacing Curriculum Mode are Scenarios, which are self-paced practice modules that let you practice for real-life usage of your voice. In scenarios you’ll talk to bartenders, cashiers, and others you would encounter in day to day life where you’ll use your voice.

• Each time you play a scenario you’ll talk to a different voice on the other end.
• Scenarios have background noise to mimic real-life situations.
• You’ll practice speaking through conversation.
• You’ll get feedback on your voice at the end of the scenario. If your voice is in the target range then you’ll get a badge to display on your profile.
• If you need more practice, you’ll get a screen to refine your skills and practice responding to each statement in the scenario, then get feedback on your voice in real time.
• Once you’ve completed the refine your skills section you’ll be able to re-take the scenario.
• Scenario mode has a free tier — you get three scenarios free, and then assuming you use them all you get 1 new free scenario every week. Once you’ve unlocked a scenario you can use it forever.

Voice test will now function as a self-paced version of what Curriculum Mode was.

• We’ve added support for accuracy practice.
• We’ve reorganized the interface.
• We’ve added the ability to upload a clip and get Atavoice’s scoring read out.
• Voice test will now be limited to 30 free uses per user per day for unlicensed users.

Since damaging your voice can be a real concern during practice, the system will now warn you to take a rest after 25 spoken phrases in either Voice Test or Scenario Mode. Please be sure to stop using Atavoice if it is straining your voice.

There have been ongoing improvements to the algorithm due to user feedback. We believe the algorithm is in a good place, but may need some additional refinement in the future.